How Hair Gel Could Save the Planet

Call it the lava lamp that may just help ease global warming.

Sitting around that '70s relic, a group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology students were inspired to create low-tech roof tiles made from hair gel. (This where MIT students differ from the rest of us...)

Hair gel mixed with water changes color depending on temperature, so the students used the technology (if you can call it that) to create special panels that reflect the sun’s rays when it’s hot, but absorb them when it's cold.

"We originally set out to create a lava-lamp-type fluid affected by temperature so that black liquid would rise covering the surface in winter and white liquid would rise covering the surface in the summer," scientist Joe Walish told Click Green. "This turned out to be very complicated. However, we knew we could produce gels that would change from clear to white in response to a change in temperature. These include hair gels that are produced on very large scales, making them inexpensive."

How can hair gel help stop global warming? Well, to make the solar roof tiles, first the polymers are mixed with water and sealed between two flexible plastic layers against a dark background. When it’s cold the polymer remains dissolved and the black backing shows through – which absorbs the sun’s warmth (and can in turn be used to heat the building below). If it's hot, the gel condenses into a cloud of tiny droplets, which creates a white surface that in turn reflects the sun’s rays, diverting heat away from the building below.

US Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently suggested the world tackle climate change by painting every roof white. His reasoning: This would save a year’s worth of global greenhouse gas emissions within 20 years. But there was a flaw: Energy loss in the winter months. Not for Themeleon, the student's name for their discovery (named for the color-changing chameleon.)

The students are now working on a paint version that can be sprayed onto dark roofs.

See? Some answers really are black and white.

Photo courtesy hey mr glen via Flickr.