Every day, the sun beams down huge amounts of warmth and light onto the Earth, in the form of light waves, or ‘rays’. However, most of these rays are wasted, as we still have few effective ways of harnessing and storing them.
Greenhouses store these rays by using a very simple piece of science to their advantage. Basically, if you make a structure out of glass, then the sun’s rays can pass through the glass to get into the structure, but then get trapped inside.
This happens because of the unique structure of glass that allows light to pass through but not air. When the sun’s rays get into the greenhouse, they heat up the air, soil, rocks, plants and other things inside the greenhouse, which then retain the heat. As the heat that has been absorbed into the air and objects cannot simply escape again, the greenhouse gradually gets hotter and hotter because of the amount of heat that is being trapped inside.
» Read more: Rays of Light – How they can be harenessed by Greenhouses