Someday you may live in a house that keeps itself warm with a tankful of “sunshine”. The heat for such a house comes from solar energy, or energy from the sun.
The sun’s energy gives power to everything on the earth. Using the sun’s energy, plants make food for animals and people.
A house that uses the sun’s energy is a solar house – a “sunshine house”. A solar house has special collectors to capture the sun’s heat. Usually the collectors are on the roof or on the sunniest side of the house.
How is the sun’s heat stored? In one kind of solar house, water or another liquid is pumped through collectors on sunny days to pick up heat. Next, the hot water is pumped to a huge tank filled with sand or gravel. Bit by bit, it heats the whole tank. Sand or gravel can hold heat longer than water does, so heat stays in the tank long after the sun goes down.
When the house is chilly, you just press a button that turns on a fan beside the tank. The fan pulls the cool air into the hot tank. When the air gets warm, it blows out of the tank and through the house. So the house gets warm, and you do, too – with a tankful of stored-up heat from the sun.
Picture Credit : Google