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Clean Durable Energy explained to KidsElectricity Long long ago, you lit a candle when it became dark. Nowadays you can just push a button and the light goes on. In every house there are wall sockets. From there you get electricity for lamps and all kinds of electrical appliances. Bicycle dynamo A lamp uses electricity. You can make this electricity yourself, for instance with a bicycle dynamo. The harder you cycle, the faster the dynamo turns, the more electricity and more brightly bicycle lamps shine. Super dynamo An electrical power plant uses a kind of super dynamo. It is possible to turn things around in many different ways. If you have a kettle and boil water in it, steam will come out of the opening in the top. If you would hold a Solar cells With solar cells you can produce electricity in a completely different manner. You will use the energy of the sun instead. As soon as there is sunlight striking on a solar cell, the solar cell will 'give off 'electricity. To understand how that works, first you should know a little bit about electricity. Electrons When electrons and runs through an electrical wire, you say that there is electricity going through the wire. When electricity runs through an appliance, the appliance will start to work. A lamp will start burning or an engine will start turning. Electricity does not travel through plastic. That is why the outside of electrical cables are made out of plastic. Inside an electrical wire there runs a copper wire, through which electricity runs very easily. Sunlight and electrons It is possible to connect an electrical motor to a solar cell. An electrical motor has two wires with which you can contact it. The one wire must touch the upper side of the solar cell. The other wire must be held against the underside. As soon as a light beam falls on the blue upper side of the solar cell, electrons start to come loose, they start moving. Where to? The electrons would prefer to go directly back to their old position. But the solar cell is so constructed that that is not possible. The electrons can go back around the outside. That means: through a wire. They travel from the upper side of the solar cell first through the wires of the motor. And then, via the underside of the solar cell, they return. Because now electricity is going through the motor, the motor will start to turn! Why are solar cells handy? The electricity that comes out of the socket at your home, is usually made in an electrical power plant. This electricity enter the house through cables that run under the ground. Sometimes you need electricity outside as well, for instance in a meadow. There are no electrical sockets in a meadow and then it is very convenient if you have a solar panel close at hand. Electricity from solar panels is handy for:
Solar panels must be positioned to get as much light as possible. A solar panel on the North side (in the Northern hemisphere) of a roof catches only little sunlight. That is why a solar panel points South. Solar rays usually reach Earth under an angle. That is why solar panels gets more light on a tilted roof then on a flat roof. More and more solar panels are being used. More and more families make their own electricity by having solar panels in the garden or on the roof. The production of solar cells costs energy. Quite a lot of energy actually. Only after six years a solar cell produces just as much electricity as was needed for its production. Fortunately a solar cell keeps on going! More types of clean energy There are more techniques to obtain clean energy. Windmills work similar to your bicycle light. The wind turns the wings of the windmill. On top of the mill there is a big dynamo that uses the turning of the wings to make electricity. You can also propel a mill with water, by placing a carriage wheel in the river. A black waterhose becomes very hot in the sun after a while. So you can use the heat of the sun to heat water!
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little windmill in that steam then the windmill will start to turn. You use natural gas to cook water and then steam to let something turn. An electrical power plant is the same and uses for this purpose natural gas, coal or oil. Oil and coal on the other hand are very bad for the environment.