Question

Elon Musk’s company Tesla has recently developed new technology in clean energy production, the Solar Roof. The concept is instead of traditional roofing tiles, one would install the solar roof, which is essentially solar panels that replace the traditional roofing tiles. This breakthrough has been shown to be more durable than traditional roofing tiles as well. To prove this, Tesla created a “hail” test. A 2 inch diameter piece of hail was shot at the solar roof at 100 mph and the solar roof did not break while the traditional tiles did. How much energy in units of Joules did the solar roof absorb? You may model the piece of hail as a perfect sphere with a specific gravity of 0.92.

Answer 1

Given data:

diameter of hail = 2 inch ( 1 inch = 0.0254 m; therefore 2 inch = 0.0508 m)

Speed at hail hit the solar roof = 100 mph   ( 1 mph = 0.44704 m/s; 100 mph = 44.704 m/s )

Sp. gravity of hail = 0.92 ( density = 0.92*1000 kg/m^3) = 920 Kg/m^3

Mass = Density*volume

Energy absorbed by solar roof = Kinetic energy loss by hail

Energy absorbed by solar roof = Kinetic energy loss by hail = 63.10 Joule