Traditional flat-shaped solar panels may be a thing of the past thanks to an incredible leap of logic by a 13-year old New Yorker. Walking through the woods, he noticed the shape of limbs growing from trees and made the connection to the spiral Fibonacci sequence. From Gizmodo,
That trees were using this pattern to gather more light. So he did an experiment. Using the same number of solar cells, he built two working models. One was a traditional, flat array will all of the panels on a single plane. The other used the Fibonacci Sequence to create the same spiraled pattern he observed in the trees.
Aidan Dwyer discovered the tree design solar panels made 20 percent more electricity and collected 2 1/2 more hours of sunlight during the day. During the dark month of December, the tree design collected 50 percent more electricity. Aidan’s report with the American Museum of Natural History can be found here.
Congratulations to the young man on his amazing discovery!
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