Subject: Re: photosynthesis studied

From: [email-masked] (Joshua Landess)
Date: Mon, 22 Jan 1996 23:13:34 GMT

On 22 Jan 1996 03:24:58 GMT, [email-masked] (Richard Corkish)
wrote:
>>"... 'The best man-made solar collector,' Prince observes, 'is 15
>>percent efficient. 
>
>>Sincerely,
>>
>>Josh

>University of New South Wales has made a 24% silicon solar cell (see 
>http://www.vast.unsw.edu.au/pv.html ) and more efficient non-silicon devices 
>have been made elsewhere. The journal, "Progress in Photovoltaics", regularly 
>publishes a list of laboratory records.
>
>Richard Corkish
>
Just noticed your note here in Usenet too.  As I mentioned in e-mail,
yup, you're right, hadn't thought to examine the percentages he was
quoting, just the gist of his point.

The organism in question lives at the bottom of streams and such... it
appears to specialize in certain wavelengths.  Thus it may be highly
efficient at a converting a very small energy band (the color of the
organsim is not green, it is red or purple).

The focus of the article was that now that scientists have finally
gotten to better knowledge of what is going on in photosynthesis, it
is turning out that some of nature's solutions are elegant and,
perhaps, very efficient.  Thus, although it requires studying somewhat
different fields, it may turn out to be financially immensely
profitable to study nature's solutions to the challenge of Solar
Energy Conversion.

Josh