Mirrors on mountains of Norway to trap sun
Norway, 1st November 2013:
The natives of Rjukan town, Norway have the reason to cheer and would be thankful to their government as the sun will finally take its turn to the city now.
Before installation of mirrors there, the town had to spend six months a year while shriveling in chilly weather since the sun remained in shadow for the foretold period. The residents used to reach the source of Vitamin D by hiring cable car to the top of the nearby steep cliff.
Three 183 square-foot (17-square meter) mirrors are fixed on the mountain on Wednesday. The reflected faint sun rays of the winter engulfed all over the town’s market square for the first time.
TV footage recorded this moment of thrill that was bursting the residents into immense delight apparently showed that Norwegians were enjoying the noticeable effect of the warmth dispersing from the sun.
“Before when it was a fine day, you would see that the sky was blue and you knew that the sun was shining. But you couldn’t quite see it. It was very frustrating,” said Karin Roe, from the local tourist office. “This feels warm. When there is no time to get to the top of the mountains on weekdays, it will be lovely to come out for an hour and feel this warmth on my face.”
Almost all of locales of the town ‘Rjukan’, that used to endure the mar of frozen ambience, noted on Wednesday the difference in temperature that was 7 C.
Similar king of Sun-mirror arrangement is installed in the Italian town of Viganella.
The recent implementation of the plan regarding fixing the Sun-mirror on the mountains of Rjukan was the consequence of a 100 year old plan formed by the Norwegian industrialist Sam Eyde, the founder of the town. He presented the workers a ‘hydroelectric plant’ who worked at the foothill of a waterfall.
German Hitler planned for an atomic weapon through similar capture of sun light using the three mirrors for emanating it in an ellipse that would lighten about one third of the market square situated below.
Springing with joy, a band praised a cloud that tried to reverse the effect for tending it to go away through the song, “Let the Sunshine In.”
Director of the Norwegian Industrial Museum, Jan-Anders Dam-Nielsen, exclaimed with delight that a new dawn has been onset in the history of Rjukan conveying, “Soon we will celebrate 70 years since the saboteurs struck the factory,” and “Then we will think about how we mark this. This is a really important day in the history of this town. And like the mirrors reflected the sun, we will reflect this in the museum.”
Creation of solar power in the area drenched with the sun in the Middle East enables the service of helicoptered in those are fixed computer-controlled mirrors, or heliostats, 1,500 feet (450 metres) above the town square worth 5 million kroner ($850,000). Solar energy, here,is being trapped via the heliostats for supplying power to their tilting trajectory as they follow the sun’s brief light across the Norwegian winter sky.
