school energy&environment

What it is

The energy carried by sunrays as a consequence of nuclear reactions (hydrogen fusion) and transmitted to the Earth as electromagnetic radiation is called solar energy. Electromagnetic radiations are made of photons. A photon is a neutral particle that spreads into the air at a speed of 300,000 km/sec, with an energy that depends on its frequency and a mass that is considered as void when at rests (when it is not moving). The intensity of solar radiations that arrive every year to the earth’s surface amounts to 80 thousand billion tons of oil equivalent (the so-called TOE, that indicates a quantity of energy that equals the energy produced by a ton of oil). This quantity is infinetisimal if compared to the energy produced by the Sun thanks to nuclear reactions. But it is also a very large quantity, if you only consider that the world energy demand amounts to 8 billion TOE a year. From the flow of solar energy, the following are derived: biomass energy, through the photosynthesis process; hydraulic energy (the Sun, in fact, is the motor of the water cycle); wind energy from which, in turn, wave energy derives. Anything, starting from what we eat every day, is directly or indirectly linked to it. Even fossil fuels, which derive from chemical-physical alterations of prehistoric living organisms, contain solar energy. Solar radiations, although they only reach a maximum power of 1 kilowatt per square meter (soil irradiation in a clear day, sunny, at midday), are the most abundant and clean energy source on the Earth.