Engineering
Solar cells based on perovskites, calcium titanium oxide minerals or compounds with similar structures, are among the most promising emerging energy solutions. Over the past few years, engineers and material scientists have ...
Engineering
Researchers have developed a standalone device that converts sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into a carbon-neutral fuel, without requiring any additional components or electricity.
Aug 24, 2020
3
2026
Engineering
A type of beetle capable of regulating its body temperature in some of the hottest places on Earth is the centerpiece of new research with major potential implications for cooling everything from buildings to electronic devices ...
Jun 15, 2020
0
358
Energy & Green Tech
Scientists have designed and constructed a prototype for a new solar cell that integrates multiple cells stacked into a single device capable of capturing nearly all of the energy in the solar spectrum. The new design converts ...
Jul 12, 2017
34
14253
Energy & Green Tech
A team of University of Colorado Boulder engineers has developed a scalable manufactured metamaterial—an engineered material with extraordinary properties not found in nature —to act as a kind of air conditioning system ...
Feb 9, 2017
0
125
Energy & Green Tech
The idea is as straightforward as it is simple: If I can collect both direct sunlight as well as its reflection via the rear end of my solar cell, this should increase the yield of energy the cell produces. Potential applications ...
Dec 14, 2022
0
830
Telecom
Sunshine streaming through a window could be directly harnessed for wireless data transmission to electronic devices. KAUST researchers have designed a smart glass system that can modulate the sunlight passing through it, ...
Nov 1, 2022
0
738
Engineering
A team of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) researchers has designed a 'smart' device to harvest daylight and relay it to underground spaces, reducing the need to draw on traditional energy sources ...
Mar 31, 2021
1
3698
Energy & Green Tech
Two types of materials are better than one when it comes to solar cells, as revealed by an international team that has tested a new combination of materials and architecture to improve solar-cell efficiency.
Mar 11, 2021
0
101
Engineering
Rice University engineers have suggested a colorful solution to next-generation energy collection: Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) in your windows.
Feb 16, 2021
1
169
Sunlight, in the broad sense, is the total spectrum of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun. On Earth, sunlight is filtered through the atmosphere, and the solar radiation is obvious as daylight when the Sun is above the horizon. Near the poles in summer, the days are longer and the nights are shorter or non-existent. In the winter at the poles the nights are longer and for some periods of time, sunlight may not occur at all. When the direct radiation is not blocked by clouds, it is experienced as sunshine, a combination of bright light and heat. Radiant heat directly produced by the radiation of the sun is different from the increase in atmospheric temperature due to the radiative heating of the atmosphere by the sun's radiation. Sunlight may be recorded using a sunshine recorder, pyranometer or pyrheliometer. Sunlight takes about 8.3 minutes to reach the Earth. The World Meteorological Organization defines sunshine as direct irradiance from the Sun measured on the ground of at least 120 watts per square metre.
Direct sunlight has a luminous efficacy of about 93 lumens per watt of radiant flux, which includes infrared, visible, and ultra-violet light. Bright sunlight provides luminance of approximately 100,000 candela per square meter at the Earth's surface.
Sunlight is a key factor in photosynthesis, a process crucially important for life on Earth.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
