Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am an advanced grade 7 student who would like to do a project involving using solar energy to heat up a geyser system. Within my project I shall use different materials (such as foil, black paper, cling wrap a control ect.) while have created a simple watersytem for a household to see which will help heat up the water best using solar energy. I can coil a hosepipe on a piece of wood and put the 2 ends in a bucket of water. Using a pump the water will be pumped through and will pour back into the bucket. This will be repeated for each material. Why I have choosen this project is because green is in and because it can genuinely help households. I need help on how to conduct it and write it out. Do you have any suggestions? What materials should I test? Is it suitable? Where else can I get sources of information. We have begun work and could i please recieve feedback as soon as possible.

Hello and welcome to the forums.

I did a little web surfing, and it seems that the most common method of collecting solar energy for heat is to use a "flat panel". The panel is made of a sandwich of glass and a black coated metal plate, with water or anti-freeze behind the plate. The liquid can be in tubes or completely flooding the compartment.

The metal plate is either copper or aluminum - this is something you could test to see which is better. You could also test different coatings on the metal to see which is best. There is an interesting experiment with results here: http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimenta ... vsFlat.htm. Wikipedia's article about Solar Thermal Collection http://www.builditsolar.com/Experimenta ... vsFlat.htm has a pretty good summary.

Good luck, and let us know what you do for your experiment!
Best, Keith