How the Solar Panel Works
When you look at the picture above, you might ask, "How does the solar panel turn the sun's energy into electric energy?"
The solar panel is made of a sandwich of two materials called semiconductors.Each material is made of millions of atoms. As you might already know, atoms have a positively charged nucleus and negatively charged electrons which spin around the nucleus. When these two materials are put together in a sandwich an interesting thing happens: electrons become pulled from the bottom half of the sandwich to the top half. But there's a problem. The electrons are all attached to atoms, and the atoms won't let go very easily. This is where the sun's energy helps out. If we shine sunlight on these materials the sunlight has enough energy to knock the electrons off of the atoms. The electrons will then be free to be pulled to the top of the sandwich
Now if we connect wires to a motor, electrons will flow through the wire into the motor (making it spin) and back through another wire to the solar panel where they can fill the "holes" left in the atoms who lost their electrons
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