Conversation

Rey 💜 🏳️‍⚧️

"So, solar panels and LEDs are basically the same--"
"what??"
"They're like speakers and microphones--"
"WHAT!!"

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@rey reminds me, twice in the last year I've heard semiconductor laser sources are just solar panels in reverse

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@rey The solar panel - LED part, had no idea

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@spottyfox so they're basically the same: semiconductor junctions that deal with photons. if you apply enough light to a LED, it'll produce a voltage. if you apply enough voltage to a solar panel, it'll emit light. neither do a good job of doing the wrong thing, but they do

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@rey @spottyfox the light of typical solar panels is infrared too so you need an infrared camera to see it (i think phones also work?)

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things engineers assume everyone knows, number 742937

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@rey refrigerators are sorta engines that run backwards
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@charlotte @spottyfox @rey a solar panel lifehack i saw on a youtube channel (bigclivetv if i remember correctly) was applying power to a solar panel, then looking at it with your phone to see which parts of the panel have failed (not lighting up)

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@h3 @spottyfox @rey i think it relies on phone camera lenses having poor IR filtering, which phones with better cameras may improve on, but iirc solar panels and the LEDs in remotes use the same semiconductor alloy (pure silicon)

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@charlotte @spottyfox @rey yeah. u can also just aquire a cheap shitty webcam and scrape/smash the glass IR filter out of it

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@rey this is also why if you take a picture of your raspberry pi with a flash you can cause it to crash.

And those aren't even semiconductor junctions that were made for dealing with photons

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(muting this thread cuz I'm out and about, enjoy the physics!)

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@rey

Things that are not the same:

the band gap

The Gap Band

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@charlotte @spottyfox @rey

I was wondering if it was a repeatable thing... reading the OP, I immediately thought "Well if you apply enough voltage most anything will emit light 😆

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@rey @spottyfox WAIT WHAT
since when does applying light to an led produce a voltage??

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@zelda @rey @spottyfox

Steven Mould has a video showing LEDs generating voltage from light and solar panels glowing from voltage. (with an asterisk, since they glow in infrared)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WGKz2sUa0w

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