Solar Models
SunDrum
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The sound of sunlight falling on your ears! Linkage is a wooden spatula
(or popsicle stick) with holes drilled in it, slightly larger than the
dowel size. Small piece of dowel and tubing slices used to hold spatula
to pulley, which has an eccentric hole drilled into it. Screw eye at pivot.
Cork. Yogurt container.
Pass
the milk, please. 1/8" dowel running inside straws poked through container;
film canister lids for wheels and driven pulley; elastic band drive-belt.
Solar
Fountain.
Using a small water pump from Edmund
Scientific, one may, with two solar panels, pump water with sunlight.
(This is a good demonstration, but is not suitable for a permanent fixture.)
Rover
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wooden blocks glued to solar panel, screw eyes as axle holders, dowel axles.
Motor held by motor mounting clip.
Mark Mateus' Solar House - a tracking device, playing
with a simple design to make a whole house track the sun. House is mounted
on a turntable. P.V. panels are wired to a single motor so that light exposure
on one panel causes the motor to turn one way; and light exposure on the
other causes it to turn the other way. When the panels are equally illuminated
the house is at rest. When one cell is shaded, this arrangement will turn
to seek the sun again until both panels are equally illuminated once more.
Again, screw eyes hold the axle shafts, rubber tubing snippets keep the
shaft from sliding sideways, elastic band is the drive belt from motor.