Safari Notes

Touted as a promising alternative energy source for decades, solar panels crown rooftops and roadside signs, and help keep spacecraft powered. But how do solar panels work? Simply put, a solar panel works by allowing photons, or particles of light, to knock electrons free from atoms, generating a flow of electricity. Solar panels actually comprise many, smaller units called photovoltaic cells. (Photovoltaic simply means they convert sunlight into electricity.) Many cells linked together make up a solar panel. Each photovoltaic cell is basically a sandwich made up of two slices of semi-conducting material, usually silicon — the same stuff used in microelectronics. To work, photovoltaic cells need to establish an electric field. Much like a magnetic field, which occurs due to opposite poles, an electric field occurs when opposite charges are separated. To get this field, manufacturers "dope" silicon with other materials, giving each slice of the sandwich a...

Rebel, Revolutionary, Freedom-fighter, Leader, Statesman, Legend, Icon, Saint - all these can be used to describe the One and Only: Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela . He is comparable to no other leader in Africa or out of it. For a man to have spent 27 years incarcerated for no crime but because he dared speak out his mind; he dared struggle and fight for justice, equality and honor for his own majority citizens - for that man to be released from that prison and still be so humble, kind, forgiving, merciful and magnanimous to friends and foes, and those who hated and imprisoned him; and for that man to rule the country he set free for only four years and then had over power; for that man to treat all alike and equally, be they foes or friends or children or servants or heads of states; for that man, for most of his life until recently, to wake up each morning and still make his bed - these will go down in history as one of Mandela's greatest legacies and gifts to his Rainbow Nation an...