clear solar panels
i read an article the other day about research into making clear solar panels. heh. that sounds like a joke. but i think it was really on the up and up. usually you want the solar panels to absorb all of the sunlight and turn it into electricity. however, funny thing about the photovoltaic effect... the photons need to be higher than a certain threshold energy. low energy photons are useless for producing electricity. so the novel idea is to coat windows to shuttle the high energy photons to the photovoltaic cells on the edges of the window. this works pretty well because generally you can't see those high energy photons anyway. unless you're a bumble bee who can see uv. so now... in addition to covering our rooftops with pv's we can also cover the walls and windows. nice huh?