Last week on 2/17 we said goodbye to our robots and learned all about solar panels. We got the opportunity to conduct a “Solar Cell Experiment” and in this post I will share with you what my partner and I did, and the data we collected, so you can learn a little about solar cells as well!
The procedure of this experiment was to:
(1) Measure solar cell voltages (aka the light intensity) without any light
(2) Repeat the measurements for the solar cell being placed at different distances from the light source
(3) And lastly, to measure the cell voltage at a fixed distance for 4 different colored filters
Below is a diagram of the setup of the experiment:
So, once we were all set up we began running the test. As the procedure states we first ran a trial where no light was shining on the cell so we could get an idea of what the baseline reading would be. All of the data was saved for us in the Labview program as usual and we were then able to open it up in excel and do the necessary computing. Next, we conducted 5 additional tests placing the cell at varying distances from the light sources (which was like a fancy flashlight).
The data averages for these trials are depicted below:
| Distance | Volts |
| 0 | -0.033935 |
| 1 | 0.44719 |
| 5 | 0.243193 |
| 10 | 0.2804 |
| 20 | 0.018668 |
| 30 | -0.02752 |
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As you can see the trend of this data was that as the distance of the cell from the light source decreased that voltages recorded increased.
After we were done with this preliminary part of the experiment we moved on to using the 4 different color filters. Alex and I chose to use the light pink, hot pink, yellow, orange, and blue filters at the fixed distance of 5 cm from the light source.
These data averages are as follows:
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As you can see when we used the hot pink filter, we generated the most voltage while when we used the blue, we generated the least. This finding goes against what I would think the results would have presented because aren’t the darkest colors supposed to attract the most light? Isn’t that why we are are told not to wear black in the summer time? I would think that when we used no filter the most volts would have been generated followed by the yellow filter because that would have been the lightest color. Unless our data was not completely correct I am not quite sure what conclusions I can draw from this. |
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