In the Solar Energy experiment, my partners and I worked to see the effect distance has on voltage, and how different colored filters would affect voltage. In class, we learned that the stronger/closer the light source is to the solar cell, then the higher the voltage would be. This is what we sought to experiment on and find out if it was true. To do this, we had the following set of materials:

• One solar cell
• One voltage probe
• One NXT adapter
• NXT with an attached light sensor
• One light source (blue flashlight)
• Labview VI
• A Ruler
• 3 Colored film filters
• Excel spreadsheet

The image above shows the NXt adapter, the flashlight, the three different colored filters we used, the voltage probe and solar cell, and the light sensor.

Solar Lab – Here is an Excel Spreadsheet of our data

The first chart on the spreadsheet demonstrates the results we got when we used different distances between the flashlight and the solar cell. We held the flashlight at different distances from the solar cell a number of different times. The distances we chose were 1cm, 5cm, 20cm, 35cm, and one without any light. Each time the flashlight was farther from the solar cell, the voltage decreased. The closer the flashlight was to the solar cell the higher the voltage was, which is what we learned in class.

The second chart on the spreadsheet represents our results when we used the blue, green, and orange colored filters. The orange filter allowed the most voltage, then green, and then blue. To me this makes sense since orange is a light color, green is somewhat a middle color, and blue is typically a dark color.