Electrons negatively charged are knocked loose from their atoms as they are excited.
Photon number hitting solar panel.
In order to collect energy more efficiently solar panels should be angled to face as close to the sun as possible.
Photons in sunlight hit the solar panel and are absorbed by semi conducting materials.
What happens when the photons hit the solar panels.
When a photon hits an electron the photon is absorbed by the electron.
The average visible light photon has about 3 3 x 10 19 joules of energy.
The photon s energy is also absorbed by the electron.
As the next diagram shows panels like everything else are made up of atoms and atoms contain electrons.
Photon flux is an important concept in solar energy.
A spectral response curve is shown below.
Enough energy from the sun hits the earth every hour to power the planet for a year sunlight is made up of tiny packets of energy called photons these photons radiate out from the sun and about 93 million miles later they collide with a semiconductor on a solar panel here on earth.
So tear down that solar panel or we ll be pushed out of orbit nb.
The quantum efficiency gives the number of electrons output by the solar cell compared to the number of photons incident on the device while the spectral response is the ratio of the current generated by the solar cell to the power incident on the solar cell.
Looking at the big picture conservation of momentum implies that the momentum of the photon ultimately contributes to the momentum of earth.
We won t be pushed out of orbit as when we are pushed out to a larger orbit from the sun our angular velocity will be lowered increasing our acceleration back towards the sun.
A watt is a joule per second.
For more or less power multiply by the number of watts.
The spectral response is conceptually similar to the quantum efficiency.
It all happens at the speed of light.
If we are interested in knowing how much power we can generate from a solar panel we need to determine the amount of photons that are hitting the surface of our panels at any given time flux is just a technical term that denotes a quantity passing through a given surface area.