Disyembre 3, 2012

New light.

Invented by David Carroll, professor of physics at Wake Forest University:
He says the new plastic lighting source can be made into any shape, and it produces a better quality of light than compact fluorescent bulbs which have become very popular in recent years.

"They have a bluish, harsh tint to them," he told BBC News, "it is not really accommodating to the human eye; people complain of headaches and the reason is the spectral content of that light doesn't match the Sun - our device can match the solar spectrum perfectly. I'm saying we are brighter than one of these curly cube bulbs and I can give you any tint to that white light that you want."
Curly cube? I'm guessing the BBC didn't hear that right and they don't say curlicue in Britain.

34 (na) komento:

Scott M ayon kay ...

With or without the mercury?

I'm Full of Soup ayon kay ...

I have noticed tree hugger zealots refuse to acknowledge flourescent light has an inferior quality.

mishu ayon kay ...

Scott,

From the article:

"What we've found is a way of creating light rather than heat. Our devices contain no mercury, they contain no caustic chemicals and they don't break as they are not made of glass."

Nonapod ayon kay ...

As long as they can tint them so you don't get the hard white light like we're living on a planet orbiting an F-type main-sequence star.

edutcher ayon kay ...

Nice to know we still produce scholarship like that.

At least for now.

Known Unknown ayon kay ...

Sounds cool.

Aridog ayon kay ...

Although you can now get "soft white" CFL blubs that mimic the hue of incandescent bulbs by a filtering tint on the glass ... I'd very happy to have a plastic bulb with tints that range from conventional "indoor" temps (3200 to 3400 degrees K) to outdoor "daylight" temps (5600 to 6000 degrees K) where appropriate. Having them not break and last for 10 years? Perfect.

Make them suitable as outdoor spot or flood lights and I've save even more as the CFL's don't work well, and the incandescent or halogen versions don't last long. I'm off the buy another 7 of them when I finish this comment....even with motion detection controls, they wear out fast.

Richard Dolan ayon kay ...

"I'm guessing the BBC didn't hear that right and they don't say curlicue in Britain."

Anyone with the OED handy could check that hypothesis.

Wince ayon kay ...

I'm just trying to picture what cartoon image appeared above his head when this idea came to him.

SteveR ayon kay ...

The important question is can they create Christmas light strings that all work the next year?

chuck ayon kay ...

CFL's have become popular? I don't think so, they have been pushed on us by government fiat. Crappy light that costs more, it's a progressive dream.

Freddy Hill ayon kay ...

Althouse, I believe you have spotted an eggcorn...

ken in tx ayon kay ...

I call them curly fry bulbs because that's what they remind me of.

chuck ayon kay ...

Hard to tell from what I can see of the paper, but it looks like a square meter of the stuff would be roughly equivalent to a 25 Watt bulb.

Bill, Republic of Texas ayon kay ...

Made into any shape? Cool. I always thought we would get to the point where wall paint would be a light source.

The walls could be our lights. The walls could change color by a click on the computer or huge TV on one wall, etc etc

TosaGuy ayon kay ...

More of this from our universities, please.

Less "studies" programs and coordinators of this-or-that. Also LIMIT enrollment in liberal arts majors by 50 percent -- perhaps those degrees will be valued again.

Money in higher education needs to be reallocated accordingly.

Larry J ayon kay ...

It'll be interesting to see how quickly this new lighting technology moves from the lab to Home Depot and Lowes. How long will these lights last? How much energy will they consume per lumin? And how much will they cost?

I was looking at CFLs and LEDs yesterday at Lowes. A 60 watt equivalent LED was selling for $25. That's cheaper than they used to be but still way too expensive for me. Maybe this new technology will give LEDs a run for my money.

mark ayon kay ...

If it is more efficient than CFL a big seller could be to compete against LED's in the back-light market for LCD screens. A glowing plate behind the LCD may be better the light guided LEDs behind them.

And it would introduce interesting lighting options. Ceiling panels in the office that glow rather than light fixtures.

30yearProf ayon kay ...

I have a lifetime supply of incandescent bulbs in storage.

jungatheart ayon kay ...

"It is made from three layers of white-emitting polymer that contain a small volume of nanomaterials that glow when electric current is passed through them."


Don't know jack, but is this related to Kindle's paperwhite tech?

Alex ayon kay ...

I wonder what sunlight would look if our star was Zeta Orionis. Probably blue-ish.

Hindi-nagpakilala ayon kay ...

I want new lights for over my garage doors. If chuck@11:30 is right and you only get 25W/meter square, some more development is required - understatement. Meanwhile, if I want a quality LED solution - without motion sensors, the price for a pair of fixtures to replace the illumination of the two 75W incandescent $15 jelly jar type I have would run from $200 to $400 per pair (RAB or Hubbell fixtures). LED makes sense for commercial settings, but its still a tough sell for a residence. Forget CFL or other fluorescent - putrid color, bad in cold weather and not particularly long-lived outdoors in winter. And they don't like enclosures.

Geoff Matthews ayon kay ...

What about LED's?

Astro ayon kay ...

I'm guessing it was just a typo- curly Tube, not curly cube or curlicue.
As for backlighting LCDs, you need to match the lamp spectrum to the rgb filters in the LCD. A straight thin tube fluorescent is a good match, but LEDs are cheaper and simpler to drive. An incandescent lamp spectrum is a poor match to the rgb filters.

dbp ayon kay ...

" He says he has one in his lab that has been working for about a decade."

On one hand, good; they last a long time. On the other hand, bad; he invented this stuff a decade ago and it still hasn't been commercialized.

Astro ayon kay ...

Oh, rgb = red, green, blue.

David ayon kay ...

Curly pubes." The correct quote was "curly pubes."

Methadras ayon kay ...

OLED's are the real promise here. Still to expensive to make.

chickelit ayon kay ...

From the article: [Carroll] says he has one in his lab that has been working for about a decade.

Ooops! I hope he kept that a secret!

35 USC § 102(b): A person shall be entitled to a patent unless the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States...

chickelit ayon kay ...

Methadras said...
OLED's are the real promise here. Still to expensive to make.

Do they still use palladium-catalysed coupling of aromatics?

chickelit ayon kay ...

Astro said...
Oh, rgb = red, green, blue.

RGB makes white light as this "Venn diagram" shows: link. Tweaking the three components gives most any other color.

Rusty ayon kay ...

chuckR said...
I want new lights for over my garage doors. If chuck@11:30 is right and you only get 25W/meter square, some more development is required - understatement. Meanwhile, if I want a quality LED solution - without motion sensors, the price for a pair of fixtures to replace the illumination of the two 75W incandescent $15 jelly jar type I have would run from $200 to $400 per pair (RAB or Hubbell fixtures). LED makes sense for commercial settings, but its still a tough sell for a residence. Forget CFL or other fluorescent - putrid color, bad in cold weather and not particularly long-lived outdoors in winter. And they don't like enclosures.

LEDs are pretty cheap. You can get some ideas of how to make your own lights at places like 'HackaDay' or 'instructables'. Deal Extreme has some good prices on bulk giant LEDs.
You just have to be handy with a soldering iron.

Astro ayon kay ...

@chickelit
Yep, that's the way most full-color displays work. It's somewhat more complicated than that, since relative intensity, ambient lighting and the surround also affect color as well, else there's no way to get to colors like brown and gold. It's more like a 3D Venn Diagram with odd shaped blobs rather than spheres.

Methadras ayon kay ...

chickelit said...

Methadras said...
OLED's are the real promise here. Still to expensive to make.

Do they still use palladium-catalysed coupling of aromatics?


That I do not know. But I can try to find out.

Mag-post ng isang Komento

Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.