(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Siencenote:Solar Furnace [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-02-21 TV Fresnel Lens You are my sunshine, My only sunshine, You make me happy When skies are gray. The sun is mass of incandescent gas, Yo ho it's hot, the sun is not a place where we could live, But here on earth there'd be no life without the light it gives. Here in the solar system, the sun is a local big deal. Its light and heat radiation are both useful and informative. We first discovered helium via spectroscopy of sunlight and we only have to wait 8 seconds for its delivery. Suck on that Bezos. We know all about the chemical composition of stars and even exoplanets that way. A lot of people will tell you the sun is smaller than the average star, but the average is actually a red dwarf which is smaller yet. The sun is, of course, much smaller than the giants which are quite rare. The largest of the giants are bigger than the orbit of Saturn! At my latitude, insolation is about 600 Watts of light and heat per square meter. You can use that for heat or electricity, though you may want to concentrate it a bit for the former. I don't know how that 600 figure is for seasonality, it would max on summer solstice, min on winter and split the difference on equinoxes. Remember those stupid, ugly, projection tv's? They have a fresnel lens of approximately 1 square meter (top pic). It can focus that 600 Watts down to 1 square cm which will then becomes close to the surface temperature of the sun or almost 6000K/C. At high temperature, C and K are essentially the same. Did you hear of the guy cooled to absolute zero? He is 0K. Cool joke there. So, lets try that out. Here is Mr Lincoln, the only Republican most of us probably still admire. Haha-for over 100 years they were the racial justice party and dems the racist. Isn't that weird? Zap! Ouch. This is a post 1985 penny, 85% zinc,washed in copper. The zinc sublimates out when faced with the suns fury. These are actually dangerous, if a kid swallows one, stomach acid turns it to zinc chloride, formerly known as corrosive sublimate, which can burn an ulcer into their stomach lining. If you run a nail file over the edges till they are silver and leave it in a glass of coke overnight, you'll get two pieces of copper foil! “But other than that, Mrs Lincoln, how did you like the play?” Like a giant, expensive laser. Faced with the mighty power of our sun, all that exists simply evaporates. You can defocus a bit and use it as an oven or to boil water. A one page magnifer fresnel can be used to demo solar power and is easier to come by if much less potent. The 1M version is sometimes found on line for about$100. Phuc that as they say in 'Nam. For that you can get a 2W deep blue diode laser whose beam can instantly perforate and ignite paper or cardboard. You can burn lines into wood or give yourself a 3d degree burn. Only 2W but very concentrated. “Oh, you'll hurt yourself, with the microwave!” you exclaim as you climb into your multiton DeathMachine, the annual killer of tens of thousands! Thanks for the lecture, Safety Nazi. Solar power is great as long as you remember it takes the night off. Or half the year at the ends of the earth! [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/21/2112080/-Siencenote-Solar-Furnace Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/