Aloha, Science Blogs.
14 years ago
Although this story is 10 days old, it is an amazing one.
An 18-year old from a small village in Nepal has invented a solar cell which uses human hair instead of silicon. It is cheap, easy to mass produce and, most importanly it works.
This is a great example of how a young person has seen a need (Nepal has very poor access to electricity) and created a wonderful solution.
Check out the article here.
What makes this story even more amazing is that the village that Milan Karki comes from was skeptical of his inventions, and of science in general. Milan says, "They believe in superstitions, they don't believe in science. But now they believe."
That's pretty cool that he was able to show the people that science is not something to be afraid of. It could be bad if science went barging in to other people's cultures and just threw out all their beliefs. And it's happened before. But Milan is from the village, and has showed, by example, that science can help the village. His motivations were not just progress for the sake of progress, but simply to address a need in his community.
(Internet is being slow. I'll attach a pretty picture later.)
An 18-year old from a small village in Nepal has invented a solar cell which uses human hair instead of silicon. It is cheap, easy to mass produce and, most importanly it works.
This is a great example of how a young person has seen a need (Nepal has very poor access to electricity) and created a wonderful solution.
Check out the article here.
What makes this story even more amazing is that the village that Milan Karki comes from was skeptical of his inventions, and of science in general. Milan says, "They believe in superstitions, they don't believe in science. But now they believe."
That's pretty cool that he was able to show the people that science is not something to be afraid of. It could be bad if science went barging in to other people's cultures and just threw out all their beliefs. And it's happened before. But Milan is from the village, and has showed, by example, that science can help the village. His motivations were not just progress for the sake of progress, but simply to address a need in his community.
(Internet is being slow. I'll attach a pretty picture later.)
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Unfortunately, it's too good to be true. This was debunked long ago. You can Google "nepal hair solar hoax" or go directly to an article like the one on Bright Green Blog: http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/09/12/a-nepalese-solar-panel-made-from-human-hair-were-not-convinced/