David Amos

  Hurricanes are very powerful, spiraling storms that produces winds of up to 300km/h (185mph). A combination of wind and torrential rain causes widespread flooding of the land and damage to buildings. Meteorologists call hurricanes and tropical cyclone, due to the nature of their movement and the areas in which they form. They are also known variously as typhoons and willy-willies.                 Hurricanes form when moist air is stirred up by heat over warm oceans. It is thought that areas on very low-pressure suck air into the centre of the low, producing strong surface winds. The air speeds up and spirals upwards, with water vapour condensing to form cumulonimbus clouds. Heat is generated, which makes air rise faster and causes the wind speed to increase even more.                 Hurricanes occur only in tropical areas (betw...

  For millions of years, the Sun has given people a source of energy which is clean, cheap and absolutely natural. Without energy from the Sun there would be no life on Earth. But how do we control energy from the Sun (solar energy) to provide, For example, a constant energy for our homes? One solution is solar panels. These are large sheets of black-coloured glass which concentrate the heat and are positioned in such a way as to catch the rays of the Sun for as long as possible. Directly underneath the solar panel is a water tank, in which water is heated up by solar energy, giving a supply of hot water to the home . Today, there are also installations which can transform solar energy into electrical energy. This is done by using solar energy to boil water. The boiling water turns a turbine connected to an electricity generator . Another system uses photoelectric cells . Each cell is made of two layers of silicon, one on top of the other. The upper layer contains phosphorous,...