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Keeping roofs cooler to cut energy costs
想省钱？先帮你的房顶降温吧！
The roof of a house can get pretty hot in the summer. Even if there is an insulated attic below, some of that heat can work its way into the living space. That can make air conditioners work harder and pump up electricity bills. But a thin, paint-like coating could help keep roofs cooler, a teen researcher finds. And in urban areas, widespread use of her new roofing treatment might even cut the formation of lung-irritating ozone on hot days.
夏季炙热的太阳烤的屋顶奇热无比，尽管有有隔热作用的阁楼，但还是抵挡不住骄阳的高温穿透屋顶进入房间内。这可累坏了家里的空调，甚至还会有额外的电费账单等着支付呢。但一位青年研究员发现一层薄薄的涂料就能帮助房顶凉爽下来。在市区内，尽管是很热的天气，使用她的新式屋顶隔热法即使在很热的天气下也能减少会对肺造成刺激的臭氧的形成。
Shingles come in many colors, but dark ones are especially popular, says Jesseca Kusher. The 18-year old attends Spartanburg Day School in South Carolina. Like most dark objects, shingles absorb a lot of heat from sunlight. In the summer sun, they can easily reach 73.5° Celsius (164° Fahrenheit), she notes. If those shingles reflected more sunlight, they'd stay cooler. And that could help cut down on home cooling bills. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, air conditioning consumes about 5 percent of all the energy used in the United States. Cooling buildings costs the nation about $11 billion each year.
据一位来自南加利福尼亚州斯帕坦堡走读学校的18岁学生Jesseca Kusher介绍，这种特殊的屋顶由多种颜色组成，黑色尤为受欢迎。像多数黑色物体一样，这种材质的屋顶吸收阳光热量。经过夏天太阳的照射后，他们能很容易的达到73.5摄氏度（164华氏摄氏度），如果这种屋顶能返射更多的光，那么他们能保持更加凉爽的状态。家用降温设备产生的额外费用也会因此减少。根据环境保护署提供的数据，美国每年在降温设备上就会消耗约110亿美元。
Jesseca Kusher, an 18-year-old researcher from Spartansburg, S.C., invented a paint-on coating for roofing shingles. Her formula could reduce a home's cooling costs and possibly cut ozone pollution in urban areas.
Jesseca Kusher，一名来自斯帕坦堡走读学校的18岁学生发明了一种房顶隔热涂层。她的发明能减少一个家庭因制冷而产生的额外费用并同时降低市区的臭氧层污染物。
So Jesseca looked into ways to make shingles reflect more light. She mixed tiny particles - a powder - made from any of several different substances into a clear paint-like coating. One coating got graphite, the same material in pencil lead. Another recipe included gypsum. That's a soft mineral often found in the drywall干式墙 used in construction. She even tried adding mica. That's a mineral used in some lampshades. It readily breaks into small, glittering flakes.
Jesseca也尝试过寻找能让这种屋顶反射更多光的方法。她把由任意几种不同物质组合而成的粉状物，也就是微小粒子混合成一种类似涂料的东西。这种涂层包括黑铅（和铅笔芯一样的材料），另一种成分是石膏，这是一种常见于干式墙建筑中的软矿物材料，甚至她还尝试着加上云母，一种很容易被捣碎成闪亮的晶片的矿物。
Each of these powders came in several colors. In each of Jesseca's test recipes, her reflective powder accounted for 40 percent of the weight of the final mixture. She also prepared some of the paint-like coatings with no additive. That would let her judge whether a powder - versus the transparent goop it was added to - affected a shingle's reflectivity, she explains.
每一种粉状物都会放入几种不同的颜色，在jesseca的成分实验中，能进行反射的粉占最终混合物重量的40%。同时她也准备了无任何添加的类似涂料的东西，这样她能判断单纯的粉状物以及添加了透明物质的粉状物是否会对屋顶光的反射产生影响。
译文属可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载
