From the brains behind brains on, this is the Moment of Um.

Moment of Um comes to you from 8pm Studios. I'm an electron.

Um.

I'm a super tiny particle. So small you can't see me with just your eyes.

But that doesn't mean I'm not super important. As tiny electron particles help make up the atoms that make up everything. So we're sort of like the Lego pieces that help build the universe. Super important. Right now, I live with a few billion of my fellow electrons in the atoms that make up a piece of glass. It's a great place, but there's not much for us electrons to do,

so it can get a little boring. But lately, there's been a lot of gossip about our piece of glass

being added to a solar panel. Can you imagine? I hear that electrons and solar panels get to do

all kinds of amazing work. They become electricity.

At least that's what I heard.

I don't actually know how solar panels work.

My friends Beckett and Jackson were curious, too.

Hi, I'm Beckett.

And I'm Jackson.

And we are from El Salvadorita, California.

And we were wondering, how do solar panels work? The main part of a solar panel is the silicon wafer.

My name is Carl Wagner, and I'm the founder of the Museum of Solar Energy.

Everything else around a solar panel is basically just ways to protect

that thin piece of glass. Then the next layer is what they call the encapsulant. If you ever held

like a silicone baking sheet, it's kind of that same rubbery feel that it covers that. And on the other

sides of that are a piece of glass and another piece of plastic just to kind of seal out the water and make sure light can get through to it.

And then all of that's covered around with the aluminum frame just to keep it nice and rigid so you don't want to flexing too much because then you might break glass inside.

So light strikes a solar cell and basically that excites electrons.

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