NEED HELP IN QUESTIONS FOR ENERGY/POWER?

Question

3. Are there Solar power plants in Illinois? If so, how many and where?

4. Explain how Solar Panels work.

5. How long does it take for the sunlight to reach the earth?

6. What is the largest form of energy use in the US? How long can the country sustain using this form? What would be our best alternative to this form? Why?

7. What is an active solar collector?

8. What is a passive solar collector?

9. How can solar energy be used to reduce the current use of fossil fuels?

10. Explain how solar energy creates heat.

Find a solar cooker/collector you would like to build at home. Draw a basic example. Are you going to have a partner? If so, who?

Answer 1

3) none that I know of, I'm sure some people have PV panels at their houses

4) Photovoltaic Energy panels are what you want to know, light from the sun hits semiconducting area of the PV panel (usually Silicon based) and this knocks lose an electron from its shell, which them falls back to its shell releasing some energy, thus light is transformed into electricity, very infefficient...maybe 7%

5) 8 minutes or so

6) For electrical energy most is produced from Coal, next is hydro, next is nuclear with natural gas and oil very small parts.  For how long, estimates of coal at 500 years or more, hyrdo is infinite, nuclear is nearly infinite, gas an oil don't really mattter, we could do without them

7) Active solar collector is a PV panel, takes light and makes electrity

8) Passive solar are things like big brick walls that soak up heat in the day and radiate it out at night to heat your house.  They all rely on heat produced from solar energy

9) Lots of ways, PV panels, solar water heating, solar home heating....all would reduce need to consume fossil fuels to make electricity

10) Light photons from sun strike object and are absorbed, the energy is transformed into heat.  Energy is neither created nor destroyed, only changed form.  

Not sure what you mean for the last one, I'm contemplating solar on my next house I'm buying in the next couple of months

Answer 2

4. yu'll hafta ask Albert Einstein for that.  Him kame up with a theeree for it in 1905.  In 1928, got nobel pries for it.

5. 8.3165 minuts  (1 AU=8.316473 lite-minuts)

6. US enerjee yuze:

oil=36.6 Quad (38.8%)

nat gas=21.8 Quad (23.2 %)

koel=21.6 Quad (22.9%)

nukleeer=7.2 Quad(7.6%)

hydro=3.6 Quad (3.8%)

7. aktiv=yuze sun tu heet sumthang  or boil water & then yuze that tu tern terbin & make lektrons muve around.

8. passive=solar sells

9. evree lektron kount

10. absorb enerjee bekum heet.  Even if yu yuze it for sumthang els, all enerjee end up as heet (entropy).