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

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

#91

Post by llambda »

ColinWright wrote: post #69
llambda wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yup, OK. I'll stop. Despite lots of people saying they appreciate it, you've convinced me. I won't cross-reference, I won't point out when people break the guidelines, I'll just silently downvote and flag, leaving people - often newbies - with no idea why their contributions disappear or get negative karma. That might or might not lead to still more bewildered posts saying they don't understand, but that's OK. There'…

Colin,

As civil adults and in all seriousness, would you stop? Do you see why I've complained? Cruft is cruft is cruft. Clearly your strategy to mend the dupe problem isn't having a positive effect. Maybe this is because new users aren't aware of the rules (but there will always be new users) maybe it's because people are willfully ignoring the rule (but in this case why should they pay you any attention?) or perhaps there are a multitude of reasons that all contribute to the gradual decline of the richness of information as a community grows. Whatever the case may be, as a long time reader of HN and a recent user, I find that the kinds of comments you make where you show a post is a duplicate does nothing to increase the richness of the content. Instead, your comment is yet another I have to try to ignore in search of meaningful content. Please don't take this personally. I'm sorry to have called you out like this publicly, but I don't know how else to reach you: please stop.

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

#92

Post by toyg »

benmlang wrote: post #39

Need more 13 year olds like that.

I wouldn't be so sure. A lot of child-genius types end up regretting their youth and feeling like failures for the rest of their (long) lives; the risks of peaking too soon are well documented.

I hope he stays humble and does what he really wants to do, which might be in a completely unrelated field, with the same intensity he's shown in this endeavour.

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

#94

Post by TeMPOraL »

rycs wrote: post #19
ebzlo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I don't disagree that an array of cells that track the sun would produce better results, but it would be fair to assume that this would cost energy. Keeping that in mind, do you think it would still provide better results?

I'm not an expert here, but it's pointless to make tracking sun panels that costs a lot more if the outcome wasn't that great, I bet tracking sunlight is still more efficient even after spending energy to move the panels, it makes no sense otherwise. The real benefit of this is that you get a cheap motionless panel that performs a lot better than the flat version, this is specially important in places like Africa whe…

SolarFlower.org - the open source solar collector - has a non-electronic sun tracking system that I think might be more efficient than PV-powered tracking. See http://www.solarflower.org/faq.htm.

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

#95

Post by lutorm »

uvdiv wrote: post #55
felipemnoa wrote: post #3

The comparison is against a flat row of cells that do not track the sun. I suspect that it will not do better compared to an array of cells that do track the sun. 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. Very nice insight, especially for a kid his age. I ce…

"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 was where I was going too. (However, I'm not sure the power output of a panel is simply the sum of the individual cells. I thought that in a series array, the least illuminated panel essentially limits the panel current. Not that this matters in this case, since he wasn't actually measuring power. The voltage certainly adds.)

The experimental issue I thought about is that the experiment is situated next to a large wall. While the flat panel is facing away from the wall, it looks like some of the panels on the "tree" would also receive diffuse light from the wall. So effectively, the tree seems to have a larger collecting area than the flat panel. This would also make the tree less sensitive to shading.

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

#96

Post by lutorm »

ebzlo wrote: post #10
felipemnoa wrote: post #3

The comparison is against a flat row of cells that do not track the sun. I suspect that it will not do better compared to an array of cells that do track the sun. 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. Very nice insight, especially for a kid his age. I ce…

Now I don't disagree that an array of cells that track the sun would produce better results, but it would be fair to assume that this would cost energy. Keeping that in mind, do you think it would still provide better results?

The real benefit of a tracking system is that it makes it possible to use a concentrator to focus more sunlight on a smaller PV area. The panel cost is mostly in the PVs, so increasing collecting area by using mirrors is more cost effective than just using more PVs. However, this setup only works if it's pointing right at the Sun, so it requires a tracker.

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

#97

Post by tripzilch »

Explanation why this actually doesn't have a lot to do with Fibonacci from the other thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2903073

Additionally explains/shows that the Fibonacci sequence, or the golden ratio, both do NOT generally occur in nautilus shells, spiral galaxies, ancient design principles, body ratios nor are they perceived as significantly more aesthetically pleasing than other ratios of small numbers.

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

#98

Post by colanderman »

jobu wrote: post #90
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…

Pretty sure you're missing the point. This kid is 13, and he went and did his own research and experimentation, and followed through with a patent and a very well-written letter to the American Museum of Natural History. My kids are younger, but I would be happy if I could give them the sort of environment/encouragement to follow their curiosity even half as well as this kid.

Oh I get the point. I hope he reads my message because that's the kind of feedback he needs, not the deluge of "oh you're so smart for a kid!" comments he's probably getting.

(Disclaimer: I get paid to teach engineering to precocious youngsters part of the year. I'm quite familiar with the demographic.)

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

#100

Post by pixcavator »

uvdiv wrote: post #55
felipemnoa wrote: post #3

The comparison is against a flat row of cells that do not track the sun. I suspect that it will not do better compared to an array of cells that do track the sun. 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. Very nice insight, especially for a kid his age. I ce…

"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…

>If there is an unqiue optimal orientation for a single static panel (which under realistic assumptions there is)...

If you have some kind of “continuous function attains its max” argument here, I think you should elaborate. Because it’s interesting but not really “trivial”.

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