I heard a piercing noise as a plate of glass shattered and immediately felt like an idiot. I had been meticulously assembling the fragile dye-sensitized solar cells for four hours, making sure to measure the liquid semiconductor’s ingredients precisely, creating a smooth and even semiconductor, cutting a one-square-centimeter window for light to hit, measuring out an electrolyte solution to donate electrons, and I had been doing it perfectly. It was my third day at the Mark Balboa Institute for...