13 year-old Environmental Activist: Solar Panel Trees

13 year-old Aidan Dwyer is an inspirational green activist and entrepreneur who has people talking about solar panel trees.  He spoke with CNN and said “his method for arranging solar panels - based on the mathematics of tree branches - is 20 to 50% more efficient than traditional solar arrays, especially in low-light conditions, such as cloudy days in the winter or in places where there are lots of trees and tall buildings.”

"My design is like a tree," he said, "but instead of having leaves it has solar panels at the ends (of the branches)."

He presented a detailed essay describing his invention that won over the judges of 2011 at  the Young Naturalist Award from the American Museum of Natural History. His experimentation he described was this:

I designed and built my own test model, copying the Fibonacci pattern of an oak tree. I studied my results with the compass tool and figured out the branch angles. The pattern was about 137 degrees and the Fibonacci sequence was 2/5. Then I built a model using this pattern from PVC tubing. In place of leaves, I used PV solar panels hooked up in series that produced up to 1/2 volt, so the peak output of the model was 5 volts. The entire design copied the pattern of an oak tree as closely as possible.

I think that it should be encouraged for the younger generation to be creative. Aidan discovered this mathematical formula while being outside and exploring unlike most adolescence whose lives revolve around video games sitting inside all day.  This 7^th grader from Long Island, New York has the whole world talking about a revolution among the renewable energy industry.

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 “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” -Greek Proverb