Solar Energy curiousity...

[Durakken]

Can someone understand why someone hasn't invented the following...

Take the mirrors that allow light to pass one way but reflect light the other way. Create a sphere of this and then focus it into a tube or something towards a solar cell... actually couldn't you use this to gather ambient light and turn it into a flashlight?

 

[WRT54G]

You mean storing the light within the sphere indefinitely? No, it will be absorbed by the glass or scatter out practically instantaneously (one-way mirrors are ever so slightly transparent, and no glass is invisible, it does still absorb some light).

If you mean as a means to collect light from all directions, the decreased efficiency of the light passing through the one-way mirror to enter the sphere would probably cost you more energy, whereas a simple parabolic solar collector would suffice.

 

[sgrunterundt]

Can someone understand why someone hasn't invented the following...

Yes. Because it is impossible.

The laws of quantum mechanics says clearly that transmittance have to be the same both ways. There is no such thing as one way glass.

Actual "one way glass" are actually half-silvered glass. It has a transmittance of about 50% and a transmittance of about 50% (and a negligible absorbance). It works because one side is much brighter than the other, meaning that no matter from which side you look the light from the bright side completely drowns out the dark side.

 

[derkvanl]

If you mean as a means to collect light from all directions, the decreased efficiency of the light passing through the one-way mirror to enter the sphere would probably cost you more energy, whereas a simple parabolic solar collector would suffice.

A fresnel lens does a real good job.

http://www.3dlens.com/

 

[WRT54G]

A fresnel lens does a real good job.

...

Neat.

 

[aeroeng314]

Also don't forget that a sphere won't even focus all of the light to its center. In fact it won't even reflect most of it to its center. The only way light can be reflected to the center of a sphere is if it had passed through the center already. Most of the light would bounce around for some time before eventually escaping or being absorbed. But then this is why people use parabolic reflectors (or, more commonly, an array of mirrors which can be individually positioned) and not a half-silvered sphere.

 

[IvantheLizard]

Now an interesting thing I read was instead of using the current glass covering on the sola rcell was to use a special low reflectance glass. Or glass that didn't reflect as much of the light as the current covers do thus allowing more light to reach the solar cell and removing the need of having to install and program a system to follow the sun.

 

[Durakken]

I knew it couldn't have been that simple... thanks ^.^