How do you make a solar cell from everyday items?
Question:
Answer:
You can't. All known ways to make solar cells require ultra pure materials and expensive high tech equipment. Basically it is the same process as making a computer chip.
Now if you only want to make a device to capture the Sun's heat for something like a solar hot water heater, that is pretty easy.
Here's a short summary to build a very weak solar cell. You might need a few acres of these to power a house, but it is most definitely a solar cell.
You need two sheets of pure copper. Heat one on a burner until it gets covered with a black substance which is "cupric oxide". Cool it slowly and the cupric oxide will flake off, revealing a layer of cuprous oxide.
Put both this cuprous-oxide-coated sheet and the unmodified sheet of copper into an electrolyte solution (saltwater). Make sure they do not touch. You now have yourself a solar cell! Connect a wire to each copper plate and you can hook it to a meter and verify that you're in fact drawing a current from the cell.
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