The floral sculptures, up to 18 feet tall, have been installed at the Yerba Buena Gardens, where visitors can harness the power of solar energy to charge computers and cell phones. Each flower seats up to 10 people, who may also access free Wi-Fi service.

The exhibit runs through Sept. 27. Hours of operation are 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

The city’s bus riders will also receive a pleasant surprise: solar-powered ventilation in bus shelters throughout the downtown area.

The Solar Flowers will complete their tour next month in Los Angeles (Oct. 3–18).

Photo courtesy of Toyota

The plaza at New York City’s famed Flatiron Building will be flanked through Aug. 2 by “Solar Flowers” up to 18 feet high.

The oversized sculptures are partially powered by solar panels on their petals and stems.

Each flower can seat up to 10 people, who can access free Wi-Fi service and charge cell phones and laptops. Charging stations will be available 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.

The flowers are part of Toyota’s 2010 Prius advertising campaign, whose theme is “harmony between man, nature and machine.”

After their New York run, the flowers will travel to Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

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Photo courtesy of Toyota

Last month, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report confirming global warming is upon us and attributing the growing threat to the man-made burning of fossil fuels.

Opportunities to increase solar energy conversion as an alternative to fossil fuels are addressed in the Physics Today article, coauthored by George Crabtree, PhD, senior scientist and director of Argonne’s Materials Science Division, and Nathan Lewis, PhD, a professor of chemistry at Caltech and director of its Molecular Materials Research Center.

Currently, between 80% and 85% of our energy comes from fossil fuels, but they are a finite source distributed unevenly beneath Earth’s surface. When fossil fuel is turned into useful energy through combustion, it often produces environmental pollutants that are harmful to human health and greenhouse gases that threaten the global climate. In contrast, solar resources are widely available and have a benign effect on the environment and climate, making them an appealing alternative energy source.

“Sunlight is not only the most plentiful energy resource on earth, [but] also one of the most versatile, converting readily to electricity, fuel and heat,” Dr. Crabtree says. “The challenge is to raise its conversion efficiency by factors of five or 10. That requires understanding the fundamental conversion phenomena at the nanoscale. We are just scratching the surface of this rich research field.”

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