I riped two solar panels out of some solar light and tested them. I found out that they both produce 2 volts(I have no idea on the watts or amps). Iquot;ve hooked them up to an electric motor that can be driven by a AA battery, but when I hook the solar panels up to them nothing happens. What is wrong?
Mark G has a good answer. If you leave your voltmeter on the solar cells when you hook up the motor, you will see the voltage drop to near zero. Same thing would happen if you tried to use 2 9 volt batteries to start your car. They just cant maintain the voltage when high curent demands are made.
to do basic electrical experiments with solar panels and motors, it is necessary to have a digital volt-amp-ohm meter sometimes called a DVM (digital volt meter). What is the voltage that the solar panels give when the motor is not connected? what is the voltage when the motor is connected? If the motor resistance is too low, then the solar panels will not be able to supply enough current to run the motor and the voltage with the motor attached will be very low. It might take a bright light on the solar panels or direct sunlight.
The solar cells you have are not providing enough current to operate the motor. There are special low power motors which can operate directly from a solar cell but it sounds like you do not have one of these. Instead you have a common .5V DC hobby motor which requires substantially more current to operate. You can use the original circuit to charge the batteries and use the charged batteries to run the motor. The batteries would be able to supply enough current to operate the motor, but for a limited time. 8 hours of charging might give you less than 5 minutes of motor operation. An LED will draw about 20ma. In a solar light such a small current draw from an LED or two can provide hours of light. A Small DC motor might easily require 300ma to run and over 500ma to start. Running a motor from the same battery at over 5 times the current draw will result in less than /5 of the run time compared to the low current LED. So if an LED operates for 300 minutes the motor would run for less than 20.... The small solar cell size cannot provide enough current to operate the motor directly. Only by slowly charging a battery first would you be able to use the collected and stored Solar energy to operate your motor.
