The tough part is coming up with ways to turn this power into usable energy. In this article, we'll investigate the different methods engineers have developed for gathering wave energy. But first, it's important to know just how waves get this energy in the first place. Get to Know Your...
When the wind blows, the blades start moving and spin a shaft that leads from the hub of the rotor to a generator. The generator takes the energy produced from the rotation and turns it into electricity. Like solar cells, the energy wind turbines create converts into usable AC power with ...
The amount of energy in a light wave is proportionally related to its wavelength: shorter wavelengths have higher energy. Of visible light, violet has the most energy and red the least. Just above the visible light spectrum is ultraviolet (UV) light, and it turns out that natural sunlight ...
In order for the film to record these differences, the light has to start out with one wavelength and one phase across the entire beam. All the waves have to be identical when they leave the laser. Here's what happens when you turn on a laser to expose a holographic plate: A column ...
While the part of the gadget that touches your skin turns your warmth into energy, the wearable shields its cold side from the sun’s rays with a wavelength-selective film to preserve the temperature differential. But this gadget’s success as a wearable comes down to its extreme flexibility ...
Let’s turn to science. Physics makes it worse Physics is clear and certain. Light is a wave of electromagnetic energy (and/or a particle, but for today it’s just a wave OK?) and, like a vibrating guitar string, light waves wiggle at certain frequencies. Some of those frequencies ...
Solar heat passes through the glass, is absorbed by the thermal mass wall, and then slowly releases into the home. Whereas direct solar radiation has a shorter wavelength and is therefore easily conducted through glass, the re-emitted heat from the thermal mass takes the form of longer-...
During this process, those photons also push electrons out of some of the atoms, resulting in ions, and sometimes slower moving photons, too - this effect is why X-rays fall into the category of ionizing radiation. The scanner uses the energy signatures of those ions and sluggish photons to...
5c, the wavelength of the sound in question is almost identical to interatomic distance. Such a wave can be generated either by a leftward or rightward shift of all atoms. A thermal gradient lifts this degeneracy. The fundamental reason behind the success of this simple approach is yet to ...
The brain, in turn, translates all that activity into an image. Because the eye is a sphere, the surface of the retina is curved. When you look at something, three things must happen: The image must be reduced in size to fit onto the retina. The scattered light must come together --...