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Now we explain to the story of Mária Telkes, 1 of the builders of photo voltaic-thermal storage systems. Telkes was so committed to the globe of photo voltaic electrical power that while she was operating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she attained the nickname the “Sun Queen.” Above her life span, she registered extra than 20 patents, nearly all related to harnessing the electricity of the solar.
Her innovations that utilized solar strength integrated an oven, a desalination gadget and one of the initial solar-heated homes, the Dover Sunlight Home, produced in 1948. We heard about Mária Telkes from Erin Twamley, a children’s guide author who shares the stories, professions and the superpowers of day-to-day women of all ages. She reported she would love to see Telkes in every fifth quality classroom to encourage youthful individuals.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Johanna Mayer: In 1948, a bizarre residence appeared in Dover, Massachusetts.
Currently, Dover is a very well-to-do suburb of Boston, but it used to be rural farm place. Slender roads, yawning inexperienced lawns, fields with horses. The properties tended to be stately Colonials, or possibly the newer ranch design and style.
So when this new household went up… it stuck out. Significant time.
Some say the dwelling resembled a wedge of cheese. Consider obtaining a triangular wedge of cheddar and putting it on the desk with the huge facet experiencing down. Which is the form of this house. The slanted component of the cheese wedge – the back of the residence – appeared reasonably typical, with brown siding and some windows. But the other side of the wedge – where by the rind would be – was a futuristic area household. It was lined edge to edge with eighteen 10-foot-tall, imposing glass windows… designed to beckon in the sun.
I’m Johanna Mayer, and this is From Our Inbox, a collection from Lost Ladies of Science. This abnormal home was called the Dover Sunlight Dwelling. And it was the brainchild of Hungarian-American biophysicist Mária Telkes.
Erin Twamley: &hairspMy title is Erin Twamley. I am a kid’s e-book creator who enjoys to share the tales, occupations, and superpowers of day-to-day ladies.
Johanna Mayer: Erin writes publications about what she phone calls “everyday superheroes” – women who function in STEM, or science, technological innovation, engineering, and math. It was Erin who to start with wrote to us about Mária Telkes.
Erin Twamley: I would like Dr. Maria to be in just about every fifth grade classroom. Dr. Maria truly aided to form some of our knowledge of what we can do with photo voltaic electric power.
Johanna Mayer: Mária Telkes was born in Hungary in 1900, and bought interested in solar vitality while finding out at the University of Budapest. By 1924, she’d gotten her PhD in actual physical chemistry, and she made the decision to shift to the US to do the job as a biophysicist at the renowned Cleveland Clinic. Biophysicists typically utilize the rules of physics and math to biological techniques – for instance, when she was at the Cleveland Clinic, Mária worked on a photoelectric machine that recorded mind waves.
Right after a couple many years, she moved to MIT. And she grew to become so focused to the entire world of solar, that she shortly gained a nickname: the Solar Queen.
Above her life span, the Sun Queen would gain additional than 20 patents, practically all of which experienced to do with harnessing the energy of that wonderful huge burning ball in the sky.
Erin Twamley: I assume 1 of the neatest items that she came up with is called one particular of the 1st solar ovens that would be easy to use, and that could be used in remote areas.
Michelle Addington: This a person is in close proximity to and dear to my coronary heart for the reason that I built a portable, light-weight photo voltaic oven when I was a mechanical engineering college student.
Johanna Mayer: This is Michelle Addington – she’s the former Dean of the University of Texas at Austin University of Architecture.
Michelle Addington: We simply cannot comprehend the breathtaking amount of thermal electrical power that is contained in the solar. We really don’t occur shut to comprehending it.
Johanna Mayer: Mária utilised this observation to build an ingeniously easy solar oven. Basically, it was that insulated area with a window, shrunk down to oven measurement. Metallic plates and mirrors within the box captured the photo voltaic wavelengths that came by way of the glass window – and the oven would heat up to 350 levels. In the course of a demonstration of the oven, Mária reported, “Everything seems to flavor so significantly better when it is cooked by the sun.”
When Globe War II broke out, Mária was quickly reassigned to the U.S. Place of work of Scientific Research and Improvement. And she was tasked with solving a severe difficulty: American troopers, stranded in the Pacific theater, had been dying of dehydration. As soon as once more, Mária turned to the solar.
Michelle Addington: You choose your saltwater. You sort of spread it on a area ideally a black area in which it can be going to acquire immediate sunshine. The drinking water will evaporate. Naturally the salt will be still left powering. So the drinking water evaporates and it’ll collect on a surface area that’s higher than it. Owing to floor pressure or friction, as the water vapor collects on that surface area, it will begin to condense.
Johanna Mayer: And voila – drinkable h2o. The military services would finally consist of her photo voltaic desalination system in its formal typical-issue unexpected emergency professional medical kits.
And in 1948, Dr. Mária Telkes turned her target to what would maybe be her most formidable task nevertheless: the Dover Solar Residence.That weird, cheese-formed household with a row of 18 home windows, created to use solar energy to heat a home.
The home was funded by the philanthropist Amelia Peabody and with the help of the distinguished architect Eleanor Raymond, Mária intended a residence fit for a Sunshine Queen.
Here’s how it labored. People windows? They ended up sunlight collectors. There were two levels of glass, separated by some airspace and backed by a black sheet of metallic. As the sunshine shined, the air in that place would heat up. And Mária set giant vats of Glauber salts in the vicinity of that warm air.
Michelle Addington: And so what would materialize is these type of salts commenced to liquefy. They have been absorbing and absorbing and absorbing and absorbing and absorbing warmth. They essentially functioned as a battery. You know, so if there was no put for them to dump the heat, you know, they would just continue to keep likely additional and much more liquid.
Johanna Mayer: So how do you extract the warm air from all those salts?
Michelle Addington: Simply just just sort of move air more than that. If you handed air about that, you begun to amazing down these significant containers of salts. You’d heat up the air as you ended up cooling down the vats of salts, as they have been offering up their heat.
Johanna Mayer: Lovers circulated that heat air throughout the residence.
Michelle Addington: This allowed for secure situations it acted as a fantastic battery, uh, and it could operate for a number of times without the need of possessing sun on it due to the fact of the amount of money of energy that was contained inside this form of big collection of vats.
Johanna Mayer: For two yrs, the property functioned fairly a lot as prepared. A spouse and children moved in, and took up home in the cheese-formed Sun House, offering excursions to reporters and curious rubberneckers alike. It was the only household in the earth heated fully by solar electric power. But for the duration of the 3rd New England winter season, cold tough truth set in.
Michelle Addington: Two troubles: The salts on their own are incredibly alkaline and consequently specified to corrosion. And corrosion is basically what sunk the task.
Johanna Mayer: Ultimately, mainly because of the limitless melting and cooling and recrystallizing of the Glauber salts, the material wasn’t remaining combined correctly.
And the other challenge? Nicely, it’s one that maybe wasn’t top rated of head for Mária back again in the ‘40s, but is necessary for us to assume about right now.
Michelle Addington: The largest dilemma is the actuality that cooling is one particular of our our most important wants. So significantly of the emphasis, of the entire passive solar motion, a large amount of natural systems for structures was constructed on the assumption that we essential heat. Which is not the entire world that we’re in. It really is easy to warmth. It is really really challenging, can take significantly much more electrical power to cool, 3 occasions extra power to transfer a BTU of heat out of a developing than it is to put a BTU of heat into a setting up.
Johanna Mayer: By 1954, the Solar House’s photo voltaic heating system officially went darkish. But Mária Telkes was not discouraged. The Sunshine Queen knew that no single residence could reply the world’s solar ability difficulties.
She at the time mentioned: “The difficulty of the solar-heated home can’t be solved by 1 or two experimental homes. But each and every new household is another experimental stepping stone towards the use of the sun as a gas useful resource.”
Dr. Mária Telkes died in 1995, at age 94. But her legacy lives on. Currently, the quantity of individuals installing photo voltaic panels in their houses is consistently climbing – and in a latest Pew study, 39% of home owners surveyed stated they were being critically taking into consideration going solar.
And to individuals persons nevertheless considering… I’ll go away you with the Sunlight Queen’s own phrases, from 1951: She wrote: “Sunlight will be utilized as a resource of electricity faster or later in any case. Why wait?”
Katie Hafner: Thanks to Erin Twamley for crafting to us about Dr. Mária Telkes. If you want to study more about her children’s e book series on ladies who operate in STEM, look at out her site. There’s a website link in our episode description.
This episode of Shed Females of Science: From Our Inbox was developed by Johanna Mayer and engineered by Aaron Peterson. The senior producer was Erica Huang. Our executive producers are Amy Scharf, and myself, Katie Hafner. Lizzy Younan composes our songs. We get our funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Schmidt Futures. And Paula Mangin did our fantastic From Our Inbox artwork. PRX distributes us and our publishing companion is Scientific American.
Listed here at Lost Ladies of Science, it is our goal to rescue female researchers from the jaws of obscurity, but we have to have your help! If you know of a female scientist who’s been missing to background, let us know! You can go to our website to ship us an electronic mail at misplaced gals of science dot org. You will also obtain the phone number to our tip line. We really like having phone calls to the suggestion line. I’m Katie Hafner. Many thanks for listening.
Many thanks for listening.
Further looking at:
Libguides: MIT Properties: Dover Sunlight Home.” Dover Sunlight Dwelling – MIT Buildings – LibGuides at MIT Libraries, libguides.mit.edu/c.php?g=175920&p=1160875.
Nemethy, Andrew. “In 1948, We Were being Human Guinea Pigs in the Strangest Property in Dover – The Boston Globe.” BostonGlobe.Com, The Boston World, 20 Mar. 2019. ww.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2019/03/20/ended up-human-guinea-pigs-strangest-household-dover/mxDe6r7xWHg3oMhUjDntPN/story.html
“The Marvelously Creative Daily life of Mária Telkes.” PBS, Community Broadcasting Provider, March 17,2023
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