It is abundantly clear that in our insatiable search for growth, mankind is radically changing the world in which we live. We only have one planet (despite Elon Musk’s dreams of colonising Mars), and we are in danger of damaging its life forms irreversibly.

Growth of population and industrial output is driven by burning fossil fuels, increasing the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and leading to increasingly hazardous climate change. But this is not inevitable. The earth has its own massive nuclear fusion reactor – the sun – safely placed 93 million miles away.

Worshipped by early man, the sun provides energy that is free, abundant and essentially inexhaustible, and it can largely replace the need to burn fossil fuels. Plants are way ahead of us in exploiting this. The oxygen we breath is produced by photosynthesis, the process by which plants use sunlight to capture carbon dioxide so that they can grow.

We need to imitate them. In this course we will look at the amazing way that plants use light to drive the chemical reactions involved in photosynthesis. We will then compare the process of photosynthesis with what happens in a solar cell. Finally, we will build our own ‘green’ solar cell using some vegetables, fruits and possibly even a humble cup of tea. Let’s see who can build the best-performing solar cell!