How a solar energy lamp works
Solar energy lamps are tiny, bright, and very cheap, but they’re still not quite ready for prime time.
That’s why they’re being phased out.
Here’s how to turn a traditional solar lamp into a cheap, compact and green alternative.
1.
Heat the lamp A simple way to heat a lamp is to just put it on a small heat source and leave it there for a while.
That works pretty well, but it’s not quite efficient.
So instead, you can use a tiny electric heating coil to heat the lamp, and then let the heat from the coil melt the aluminium and heat the metal.
This way, you’re not heating up aluminium in a vacuum but rather heating up a metal that has a surface area that’s small enough to get hot by itself.
In this example, the aluminium is heated by the coil, and the metal heats up by the heat it receives from the heat coil.
As the metal melts, it releases heat from its surroundings.
This produces a lot of heat, but the heat isn’t wasted.
The heat can then be used to cool the lamp down by heating it by direct electrical current, which heats up the aluminium to a much higher temperature than the metal, so that the metal cools down and the aluminium stays hot.
2.
Cool the lamp By placing the lamp in a cool, dry place, the coil can slowly melt away the aluminium.
This is because the aluminium has to be heated up by a constant supply of electricity, which is expensive and time-consuming.
To keep the lamp from overheating, it’s best to keep it at a temperature that’s a little lower than normal.
This will help prevent the lamp overheating.
3.
Build a small electric heat pump As the aluminium heats up, the voltage it gets is increased.
This increases the current, but this also creates heat, so the voltage drops.
This causes the aluminium’s surface area to become smaller, and this heats up more aluminium.
At this point, the heat is now being transferred into the metal through the metal’s conductive layer.
This heats up aluminium to higher temperatures, which increases the amount of heat released from the aluminium by the metal and helps to cool it down.
4.
Heat up the lamp This process continues, and eventually the aluminium starts to melt and the current is lost.
This results in a drop in the voltage and a loss of heat.
The aluminium stays warm by this process, so it can stay hot for longer periods of time.
It also helps to keep the aluminium hot because, if it was heated to a temperature lower than that of the lamp itself, the metal would melt, releasing heat into the air.
This can lead to fires, and it’s a bad idea to heat things up. 5.
Cool down the lamp Heat is lost from the lamp and the lamp will slowly cool down.
This helps the lamp stay hot, and also helps the metal to cool down, reducing the heat that the lamp is releasing.
Heat loss is a good thing, and if you heat things too much, they may start to melt.
This happens because the metal is losing heat, and as the aluminium cools, the air is losing more heat as well.
6.
Replace the lamp When the aluminium melts, the current flowing through the coil goes into the lamp’s metal.
The coil is heated again by the current flow, and by the voltage, the lamp heats up again.
The voltage is now low again, and therefore the lamp stays warm.
7.
Heat out the lamp You can use this process again to heat up the metal of the lamps faceplate, and to cool them down.
In order to do this, the lamps head is heated.
The head of the current passes through the lamp head, which gets hot by the same process that’s going on inside the lamp.
It then melts the aluminium head, releasing a lot more heat.
This also releases a lot less current, so when the lamp cools again, it can go back to a lower voltage.
In the example below, we heat up a surface of aluminium that is just about perfect, but a slightly thicker aluminium surface is needed to achieve this result.
It doesn’t take much heating, so there’s no need to replace the lamp permanently.
The lamp can then go back on the market as a cheap alternative.