Photovoltaics: A Diverse Technology

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Description

This video reviews how photovoltaic (PV) cells work, noting that technological innovations are decreasing costs and allowing PV use to expand.

Solar cells are human-made devices that likewise capture the sun’s energy and produce electrical energy.

Electromagnetic radiation (e.g., radio, microwaves, light) can be modeled as a wave of changing electric and magnetic fields or as particles called photons. The wave model is useful for explaining many features of electromagnetic radiation, and the particle model explains other features.

The term “heat” as used in everyday language refers both to thermal energy (the motion of atoms or molecules within a substance) and the transfer of that thermal energy from one object to another. In science, heat is used only for this second meaning; it refers to the energy transferred due to the temperature difference between two objects.

Photosynthesis and cellular respiration are important components of the carbon cycle, in which carbon is exchanged among the biosphere, atmosphere, oceans, and geosphere through chemical, physical, geological, and biological processes.

Changes of energy and matter in a system can be described in terms of energy and matter flows into, out of, and within that system.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed—it only moves between one place and another place, between objects and/or fields, or between systems.

The transfer of energy can be tracked as energy flows through a designed or natural system.

Energy may take different forms (e.g. energy in fields, thermal energy, energy of motion).