Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

inhabitat.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 151 posts

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#71

Post by sebbi »

lloeki wrote: post #68
uvdiv wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Basically the tree of cells are arranged in different angles so that as the sun moves some of them will always be receiving optimal sunlight when their normal is parallel with that of the incident light." Except it's trivially impossible to generate more energy like this (as he claims)! If a set of solar panels is independent and non-interacting (e.g., they don't shade or heat each other), then their total power out…

Agreed with the experiment flaws, plus the article is way too shady to make anything even remotely reliable out of it. It reads awfully like "Child pwns scientists, saves world and his dog" Still, what if you consider a fixed volume as the constraint in establishing the comparison? For a flat panel assembly, a given volume would constrain the surface quite obviously. If you consider a tree structure one might be able…

And how should that work? The sun is point light source, so the light comes from one direction only and you need to face your solar cells in exactly that direction.

If you want to maximize the given volume a tree doesn't seem like the optimum ... covering the whole surface of the volume should be the optimum (to receive every reflected light).

Also the tree has a lot more solar cells than this kids flat panel and he is still only measuring voltage.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#72

Post by sebbi »

toppy wrote: post #65
uvdiv wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Basically the tree of cells are arranged in different angles so that as the sun moves some of them will always be receiving optimal sunlight when their normal is parallel with that of the incident light." Except it's trivially impossible to generate more energy like this (as he claims)! If a set of solar panels is independent and non-interacting (e.g., they don't shade or heat each other), then their total power out…

This guy is 13 ;)

no excuse ;-)

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#74

Post by romansanchez »

Jach wrote: post #42
bragh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends from the school and the textbook. My math textbooks didn't even mention the Fibonacci sequence and it wasn't until Project Euler that I found out about it.

I learned more about Fibonacci and the golden ratio in nature and art through my high school Art History course than I ever did in a math course. Though I had played with fractals a little bit before that course so the fractal geometry of nature and Fibonacci-fractal relationships weren't a complete mystery to me. http://fractalfoundation.org/OFC/OFC-11-1.html

Same here, I learned about the golden ration in my high school Art class. Weird, because it was never mentioned through my college years despite how important and ubiquitous it is.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#75

Post by CrLf »

cperciva wrote: post #16

He "discovered" the Fibonacci sequence in how trees branch? Seriously? Maybe I'm just being a grumpy old guy here, but when I was in school this was in our math textbooks as an example of how the Fibonacci sequence appears in nature.

No, he asked _why_ the Fibonacci sequence and not another arrangement altogether.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#77

Post by colanderman »

I don't get what his results have to do with the Fibonacci sequence. Between his "control" and the design he was testing, he changed:

1. panel heights 2. panel angles 3. whether panels were stacked or not

I would guess that any of those three things matter way more than the position of the "leaves" following the Fibonacci sequence. He needed to compare his design to a similar tree-shape whose "leaves" were, say, uniformly or randomly spaced; not to what amounted to a patch of moss.

(Which brings to mind: solar panels which were shaped more like moss (i.e. rough) would probably perform even better. I'm pretty sure I remember MIT or some place building a prototype like that.)

Finally, he measured voltage but made claims about power, which is a huge no-no for solar PV. Solar PV panels have highly nonlinear voltage/current characteristics, which means that increased voltage does not correspond to increased power, especially in setups such as the tree where the solar panels are not uniformly illuminated.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#78

Post by CrLf »

doyoulikeworms wrote: post #49

This is much harder to keep clean than a simple, flat array of panels.

Maybe not. Trees have to keep their leaves clean, and perhaps the Fibonacci placement doesn't only improve sunlight collection, but also rain collection for cleaning.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#79

Post by JoeAltmaier »

colanderman wrote: post #77

I don't get what his results have to do with the Fibonacci sequence. Between his "control" and the design he was testing, he changed: 1. panel heights 2. panel angles 3. whether panels were stacked or not I would guess that any of those three things matter way more than the position of the "leaves" following the Fibonacci sequence. He needed to compare his design to a similar tree-shape whose "leaves" were, say, unif…

Its not a science experiment unless you quote some famous math principle :)

Anyway, go ahead, do the experiment yourself! Its not rocket science. No need to guess, when the answer is only a little effort away.

Re: 13-Year-Old Makes Solar Power Breakthrough by Harnessing the Fibonacci Sequence

#80

Post by tokenadult »

llambda wrote: post #61
ColinWright wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In part, this is why it says in the guidelines: In Submissions ... Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter. http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your last link has now been submitted by someone as a separate item and is just so much better. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2902496

Colin, It seems a great deal of your comments have begun to fall into either the "this has already been posted" or "you're not following the rules" category. Do you see the problem with "contributing" material on top of material you see as less than satisfactory? You're only adding more cruft to the cruft. We get it. You don't like reposts. We get it. You don't like it when people don't follow the rules to a "T". Gue…

That's really a cheap shot after Colin's kind reply to your informational question from just the last month.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831538

Post reply on HN