ARTICLE: When Olafur Eliasson and Frederik Ottesen heard that more than 1 billion people on Earth don’t have access to electricity, they wanted to help. In many places, lack of electricity means students can’t study after dark and families can’t cook after the sun goes down. It’s also harder for doctors and nurses to treat patients without good lighting. Eliasson and Ottesen decided to invent a solar lamp that would provide light without costing a lot of money, polluting the air, or causing fires.
Their solution? The Little Sun lamp is a sun-shaped light with a light bulb on one side and a solar panel on the other. The Little Sun lamp uses energy to provide light to people who need it, but the Little Sun doesn’t make its own energy. To run, the lamp needs to get energy from somewhere else. In this case, that source of energy is the sun. The solar panel on the back of the lamp converts light energy from the sun into potential energy that can be stored in a battery and used later to make the light bulb shine. Little Sun lamps charge in the sun during the day and provide light at night, allowing people to study, cook, work, and take care of other things even after the sun sets. They’re inexpensive, don’t pollute, and don’t cause fires.

questions: 2) How does the Little Sun Lamp help people around the world get light?

3) How does the Little Sun Lamp use energy from the sun to make the light bulb shine?