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Just one look at the recent Solar Decathlon competition in Washington DC (see www.solardecathlon.org) tells me it's youth, right this second, that as much as anyone will contribute to solar, green, and alternative technologies during the next two years. Add a spoonful of "digital" technology that industry is providing to the mix, and that tells me that we're shortly going to be in a somewhat advanced position from what we know now.
I now recognize the youth movement is serious—I was just asked to participate as a mentor in a local educational effort—and I'm beginning to acknowledge that we're going to depend on the high schools and the colleges more than ever before to help drive activity. On the other hand, maybe the professional organizations get involved because of economics and the realization they want to be on the ground floor to address future markets that target the next generation of young, enlightened, and politically astute consumers. Or maybe the big companies participate for tapping a young person's brain, or recruiting the brightest of the bright as future researchers. Or maybe it goes beyond that, with established researchers just a little concerned that they're going to be outdone by some young guy or gal who happens to stumble on applying a law of nature that's been previously overlooked. It won't be the first time.
Look to the pro's, though, including some like Texas Instruments for introducing digital processing techniques to make solar and alternative power technologies more efficient. For all the questionable claims its supporters have made in the past, the digital world brings a new level of energy management when properly applied. I certainly feel uncomfortable with the history of the "digital" parlance, by the way, but it's here to stay. I just saw the term "digital battery" for the first time this morning!
As for advancing the solar and green technologies, my advice to high schoolers is to get down to the basics if you want to find out anything. Here we are in 2007, and all of science has yet to master the concept of "energy," one of the most used words in this business. Indeed, they still have to figure out what it actually is. Then, especially appropriate to the subject of solar power and light, there's the business of photons. It's a particle, they keep insisting. But that implies it has mass, and if that's so it can't travel the speed of light. Let alone be light? So now we introduce more complication by using terms like "zero rest mass" and "wavicle" (and more incredibly, "energy wavicle"!).
What all this tells me is that there's too much hand waving going on. Curiously, though, I envision some young person with the brainpower to figure these things out before I'm gone. It won't surprise me at all if the road to better understanding comes from a teenager who's not even in college yet.
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