this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
809 points (98.7% liked)

Science Memes

18970 readers
2055 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] simcup@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

turns out we sort of have that. only it does not boil water, but heats the air so liquid hydrocarbons come out of it https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/server/api/core/bitstreams/186f37f3-be00-415e-8bbb-439b66ee2b75/content

[–] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 5 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

I'm pretty sure we have actual solar water heaters too tbh

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

All it takes is a water pipe painted black zigzagging inside a box which is black inside and has the sun facing side replaced by glass.

You can get hot water from something like that even in Winter.

[–] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 3 points 13 hours ago

you can get>200F from a passive solar air heater made of soda cans on a 30F day.

https://www.instructables.com/Aluminum-Can-Solar-Heater/

[–] simcup@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

we do. they are about the size of a solar panel, look similar and are on some roofs of houses in my area. the ones i'm refering to are not for boiling water, just for preheating so need less energy when it goes back into the [ger: heizungskreislauf]. all the ones i know are older then the current solar panel boom. fun fact, there are even concepts (and implentation, but i can't find it) for vacuum glas tubes that have a parabolic mirror around a black painted copper pipe, which should be able to generate ~400 °C "process heat". but they are not wide spread, cause PV is so much cheaper now