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Boffin builds DIY solar cell from doughnuts and tea

Improbability drive?

An inventor claims to have proven that a mixture of teatime staples from England and North America can be used to make solar panels.

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In a fast-paced video, the presenter runs through a process that essentially combines chemicals from tea and American-style sugared doughnuts to form a solar energy soaking film that can be applied to a sheet of glass.

The process isn’t easy and requires a fair amount of scientific kit, but he starts by extracting “titanium dioxide nanoparticles” from some powdered sugar doughnuts.

Roughly ten layers of these nanoparticles applied to a sheet of glass is, according to the video’s presenter, “pretty much a solar cell”.

But because this set-up on its own won’t work with “regular sunlight", the presenter next extracts organic dyes from a cup of sweet tea that enables the solar cell to “absorb light we can see”.

Finally, to prove that his invention works, the solar scientist hooks the cell up to a multimeter that appears to show an electrical current being generated from the DIY solar cell. ®

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