Slashdot Mirror
Light Bulb Replacements
LoveOO writes Boston.com has a story about three companies which are trying to replace the Light bulb. I say it's about time and what about hydrogen powered vehicles? Two things that annoy me are filling the gas tank and changing light bulbs. It's time we did alot less of both."
Plans to build a better mousetrap are still at the brainstorming stage
Filling the gas tank is so much worse than filling the hydrogen tank?
Je ne comprende pas.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
But if we get rid of the lightbulb what will appear over my head next time of think of something?
Two things that annoy me are filling the gas tank and changing light bulbs. It's time we did alot less of both.
Do them both at the same time, sooner or later you won't have to do either ever again.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
From the article:
(Imagine that, though: a computer that would glow different colors based on how much of its processing power was being used. When it turned red, you'd know that a crash was imminent.)
The Red Computer of Death then. I am not sure why your computer should crash if too much processing power is used. Maybe a combination of AMD procs and Windows?
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
From the article:
"and they require much less electricity -- up to 80 percent less"
"You could replace a 100-watt light bulb with a 60-watt LED, and get the same brightness,"
"You'd save 40 percent on power"
So it is 80 percent or 40 percent?
=)
Two things that annoy me are filling the gas tank and changing light bulbs
/. articles complaining about people worrying about optimizing the wrong sort of time wasting activities. Oh wait...
OK. So how much time are you spending changing light bulbs per year? And was the total time spent submitting this news story longer?
To be honest I don't think that changing light bulbs is a major household time sink. (Different story of course for people who deal with traffic lights, and hence the move to LEDs). I must spend minutes per year changing light bulbs, I waste far more time replying to
John.
Last I looked into white LEDs there was still a color problem. The light comes out just a bit too blue. At the time, it was impossible to get a truer white in a single 'bulb'.
Getting diabetes AND salmonella would be a bad weekend.
I don't know about you, but im realizing the same benefits as they claim you get from LEDs, but my bulbs cost a whopping $2 for a lamp bulb and $3 for a fixture bulb. Flourescent! Cheap, no heat, hard(er) to break. Think about it.
Jeff
Well, I'm damn sure Color Kinetics isn't getting any of my money. From the article:
The company holds 19 patents related to the control of LED lighting systems, and has filed for more than 100 additional patents. "We spend about a million dollars a year filing patents," says chief executive George Mueller. The company has two full-time patent lawyers in-house, and also works with the Boston firm of Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks.
And:
It'll be interesting to see whether Color Kinetics can exact a licensing fee from anyone who blends colored LEDs. Says Simms: "We haven't invested the fortune that we have in intellectual property without planning to defend it."
I'm not going to rant about this, because you've all heard it before. So I'll just sit here and fume silently...
Hyrdrogen "clean" fuel is a misnomer...since the hydrogen you get from one of these California H2 stations is made from natural gas, and not electrolysis. You end up using fossil fuels just the same. Maybe some day we can switch to from-water hydrogen...but where are we going to get those petawatts of electricity to do that? Nuclear power? We can't agree on a place to get rid of our waste. Solar? It takes energy to produce those acres of panels, and you are displacing wildlife in the process. Microwave from satellites? Just wait until that satellite malfunctions and carves a 500-foot-wide trench through Manhattan. There is no "clean" solution here.
At 7c per KWH
((((12 x 365) x 100) / 1,000) x $0.07) = $30.66
this is under the 5000 hours of long life bulbs which cost less than $3.
Who cares how much the bulb costs ?
LEDs have their places where you need something bright and compact that can be turned on and off quickly. I like the new LED flashlights, brake lights, and street lights. But use flourescents for lighting, please, and use them today.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
Additionally, you can't go wrong with nuclear power if you're looking at least polluting power sources. Many people look at solar as if its some sort of panacea, but the amount of energy that goes into making a tile is far more than you'll ever get out of it -- turns out that at the end of the day the thing everybody's been complaining about is the best option because all the pollution is contained.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
The thing is, no matter how cheap they make LED lightbulbs, I doubt they'll ever get as cheap as the incandescent bulb, as the incandescent bulb is just plain out cheaper to make as it is much more simple. Therefore, the Wal-mart crowds will still buy the standard bulbs for years to come.
What they should do if they want people to adopt these new bulbs is make it so all lightbulb packages have to display the average cost of the lightbulb over its lifetime. People may see that the LED or flourescent lights sitting on the shelf right now cost a lot more and don't buy them, but I bet they will when they see on the box that the bulb over it's lifetime costs a fraction as much in electricity used.
I have always suspected that many electrical issues, including frequently blown light bulbs, are caused by dirty power. What I really want isn't better light bulbs, it's better power. Everything would operate better and/or longer if the power coming out of the sockets wasn't so random and dirty. Ever look at a standard 120V AC on an oscilliscope? Nasty.
Does anyone know of a whole-house solution for providing clean, voltage-regulated power to an entire house? I probably have $50K+ of computers, music equipment, home theatre, etc, and all of it would be better off with clean power.
We have whole-house solutions for water filtering, air filtering, so where's my whole-house solution for clean power (and maybe even whole-house UPS?)
Florescent lights work just fine, are more efficent (especially if you want white light) than incandescent bulbs or LEDs, and are cheap and well developed in comparison.
They've got a whole spectrum of colored tubes using the same technology as they use to make neon signs, if you so desire.
The only thing that you get with LEDs is the ability to get small amounts of light from very small amounts of power.
They are great for microlights and flashlights and medium-sized jumbotrons and a few special purpose applications where normal lights just won't work. The LED manufacturers are getting sick of just making indicator lights, so they are trying to push their new toys as much as they can.
Gentoo Sucks
The fact is that you need energy to produce hydrogen, and that energy is probably going to come from either Coal, or Natural Gas. The end user thinks their helping the environment, but what really happens is that the production of a carbon exhaust is moved back in the supply chain. The amount of Hydrogen produced by a renewable source in any reasonably short time frame (20 years) is going to be almost negligible.
The Hydrogen Future seems too good to be true, because it is.
--Mike--
I've tried over and over to use flourescents, but:
Clear, Dark Skies
I also wonder if any company who invents these lightbulbs will not build in some sort of artificially short lifespan so as to have an increased revenue as people have to continually buy more.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Great!! I'm not against the concepts of patents, but this just seems crazy, this can only hinder innovation not promote it.
overly broad patents + full time patent lawers != good business
There is no dark side of the moon really, matter of fact it's all dark
I must say that Color Kinetics gear rocks. Their color-mixing LED arrays not only look cool, but are a neat toy to program for fancy light shows.
Also on the LED front, the city where I currently reside (champaign, IL) recently passed funding and a proposal to replace all of the old incandescent traffic signals with LED arrays. Should cost a lot of money originally, but will save big on electricity bills in the long run. Here is an interesing EPA EnergyStar paper talking about the potential energy savings that cities can get from this technology -- 1 Million kWh and nearly $70,000 per year per 100 intersections! Also, LED based traffic signals are (IMHO) easier to see both at night and during the day.
One complaint from a study is that the green traffic lights are actually too bright.
worlds oldest currently operating college webcamWho is General Failure? And why is he reading my disk????
How many Slashdotters does it take to change a light bulb?
... another 6 to condemn those 6 as anal-retentive 2 industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term is "lamp" 15 know-it-alls who claim *they* were in the industry, and that "light bulb" is perfectly correct 156 to email the participant's ISPs complaining that they are in violation of their "acceptable use policy" 109 to post that this forum is not about light bulbs and to please take this discussion to a lightbulb forum 203 to demand that cross posting to hardware forum, off-topic forum, and lightbulb forum about changing light bulbs be stopped 111 to defend the posting to this forum saying that we all use light bulbs and therefore the posts *are* relevant to this forum 306 to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior, where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best for this technique and what brands are faulty 27 to post URL's where one can see examples of different light bulbs 14 to post that the URL's were posted incorrectly and then post the corrected URL's 3 to post about links they found from the URL's that are relevant to this group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group 33 to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all headers and signatures, and add "Me too" 12 to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot handle the light bulb controversy 19 to quote the "Me too's" to say "Me three" 4 to suggest that posters request the light bulb FAQ 44 to ask what is a "FAQ" 4 to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?" 143 to say "do a Google search on light bulbs before posting questions about light bulbs", 43 to post "In Soviet Russia we dont change light bulbs", 67 to reply "You insensitive clod, I prefer candles!" and 1 forum lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now and start it all over again
1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed 14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently 7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs 27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs 53 to flame the spell checkers 41 to correct spelling/grammar flames 6 to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb"
--
One by one the penguins steal my sanity...
Hydrogen is a joke. It takes energy to break apart water. Besides, the highest energy density available is in hydrocarbon chains (i.e. gasoline).
Personally I think they should switch the socket to the spring-loaded bayonet style used in countries like Britain. I intensely dislike the normal screw sockets her in N. America. So much more effort, and I've had a few occasions were the glass unscrewed and left the metal base jammed in the socket (corroded or just double-threaded). I don't think the extra strength of the screw sockets is really worth it.
Your grandchild will ask you about that glass ball over someone's head. You'll have to explain that back in the old days, right after the incredibly disastrous Y2K, people were still using "analog light"
-- Leeeter than leet
I don't like light, you insensitive clod!
Informatus Technologicus
by running an exterior light all night in the first place?
Light polluting scum.
Clear, Dark Skies
The production of H2 in a plant is much cleaner then what you would think. In a controlled large scale system, you can make it pretty efficient and as a result run relatively cleaner.
Not saying its 100% clean, but its a net gain of 'clean', when you take into account the filth cars spew out using carbon based fuels directly..
And no, I'm not a tree hugger.. I LOVE my car.. but I also realize what it spits out the back end due to its fuel..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This will kill the lightbulb joke. You'll tell your grandchildren a lightbulb joke and they'll say "what's a lightbulb?".
:)
A whole avenue of humourous pleasure will be closed
My father still tells the tale of the paint he saw in the '50-'60's that would eliminate light bulbs. I believe it was low voltage, so you just paint a surface, attach an electode (probably paint-over an electrode or 2 already anchored to the wall) and get as much light as needed with different sized surfaces. This way, entire ceilings or small spots could be used as illuminating sources. Liquid LED?
I'm sure GE had something to do with the product never seeing the "light of day" (um...yeah).
Plus ca change, plus c'est les memes choses.
It's not the cost of the bulb that they're aiming at saving, it's the cost of the labor for 1) the cop directing the traffic while the 2) road crew changing light bulbs on the traffic light. The labor cost must be greater than (number of traditional bulbs equivalent to LED life)*(cost of traditional bulb) - (LED life) for this to be worthwhile from the labor standpoint.
Also, since LED use less power, replacing the bulbs with LED will also make it more energy efficient.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
fluorescent: Pro 1)Use minimal amounts of power 2)Compact 3)Produce large amounts of light Con 1)Light still has an annoying 60hz cycle, (could be deadly around machinery) 2)Warmth or coldness of light can be tricky to pick out. 3)Outdoor use is limited 4)Long warm-up times make them impractical for bathrooms and immediate turn-on areas. LED The LED bulb holds the promise to fix all of the inadequecies the current compact flourecents have while retaining their efficiency. I think there is a really big future in this technology.
While I can understand the "redundant" moderation, I can't understand the "Flamebait" point. I really do think people should spell words properly when they write.
:P
I apologize to the person who was deeply offended and scandalized by my belief. Plez forgiv me.
I recenly bought a bunch of Inova Microlights to pass out at work as a going away gift and the amout of light they product for their size in amazing.
I've been really itching to get ahold of a next generation Luxeon Star LED light. The CMG Sonic and Infinity look prety sturdy.
More information and comparisons on LEDs and LED flashlights han be found here.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
Fluorescent bulbs contain mercury, and are rarely disposed of properly. Here's a stat I just found on the web (so it must be true) ...discarded [fluorescent] bulbs release approximately 2-4 tons of mercury per year in the United States...
(this is just the ones that are improperly disposed of and break)
>> 3. They make everyone look slightly green
Keep shopping.
I, too, hated the funky color flourescent lights produced. Then, about a year ago, I discovered that Sunbeam sold screw-in flourescent lights that emit light indistinguishable from incandescents (to my pretty picky eyes).
I originally bought them from Target but stopped by a few days ago for the first time in a long time and learned that the don't sell them anymore. Oh, the wonders of the American marketing machine.
Not all flourscent lights are the same. Find the Sunbeams.
--Richard
I think one of the general enthusiasms regardless of the fact that it will still require fossil fuels, is that with a generation plant using fossil fuels, the effluent is restricted to one location. With proper scrubbers and whatnot, even with the same discharge, it beats the distributed polluting scheme of gas-burning cars.
I've got a lot of pretty old LED stuff. I've never seen one burn out. From what I know of how they pump photons, I'm not sure how you would burn them out other than running them outside of spec.
Why does the article say "lasts up to 10 times longer"? Are they figuring on the probability of losing them to surges or accidents? Or is there something I don't know about LEDs?
Still the best way is the florecent alternative. I use all florecent in my home and getting the bulbs at cosco is cheep. I use about 15 watts as compared to 60 watts. I found different brands can produce a very similar colour of light as the old bulb.
If you read the article it only shows a drop from 100 watts to 60 watts, not much of a change compaired to the florecents (did I miss something?) and $100 a pop sucks.
click...
I remember reading about central lighting, a sort of light equivalent of central heating, or central a/c. Have powerful, super-efficient central lightsource, and then cheap fibre/fiber optics to pipe it around the home/office.
That seemed a much better bet to me, especially as some of that light might be piped from the roof into inner parts of the building...
I use clear Sylvania 130V bulbs throughout my house, and have not replaced a single bulb in over a year since I moved in. Not a single bulb.
Using a bulb rated at a higher voltage (at least 5V) than your electrical system (mine seems to provide 119V at a typical light socket on a circuit running around 6A) will extend the life of your bulbs by an order of magnitude, not just by a few weeks/months: the tradeoff is that light output is decreased, in my case by about 10%. No problem, just use a higher wattage bulb or more of them.
[ home ]
Partly, to do with people using their cars unnecesarily, but also to do with how we transport goods. Production of many products is centralised, and then requires huge transportation costs.
The USA produces I think about 20% of the world's pollution. How much could you reduce this if people walked more and stopped driving huge SUVs?
Two things that annoy me are filling the gas tank and changing light bulbs. It's time we did alot less of both.
Couple of things:
1. "alot" should be "a lot". "Alot" is a proper word in the English dictionary and does not refer to quantity, look it up.
2. If you're tired of filling up your gas tank so frequently, their are many more cost efficient methods of transportation, the most economical being the bicycle. If that is too slow for your needs, move closer to your place of employment, grocery store, and bank, or get a gas/electric hybrid vehicle from Honda or Toyota, or purchase a small European diesel powered vehicle. Either way, you'll get about 60 miles per gallon.
3. Tired of changing lightbulbs? The Amish (largest population in Lancaster, PA) still use lanterns that burn precious petroleum fuels and even provide heat, a plus to anyone living in Ohio or further North. Candles I think probably give the most bang for the buck, and if you're truly talented enough, and I know you are since you posted an article on Slashdot, use that creative potential to harness the power of E A R W A X. I have no doubt that EARWAX could be a viable source of light, I know, I saw it done in the movie "Shrek", and it burns quite nicely and may even produce a pleasant aroma. Seriously though, Candle light served man through most of his existence on Earth. Hell, even the Bees produce wax that burns nicely and lasts long too, and it gives off a pleasant aroma.
4. One more suggestion, I promise! And this one is totally FREE, as in beer, but requires a little time to get working. There are these little bugs called "Lightening Bugs" that fly around at dusk. Yes, they are free, but you have to spend a little time to capture them. Now, once you have Lightening Bugs captured in a glass jar, rig up some contraption that allows them to fly into a collapsable cavity composed of TWO GLASS PLATES. The instant you smash these bugs between the plate glass, you'll have light for a few hours. Hell, this could be worth your while if you have young children. You get to wear-out the kids by having them hunt down the lightening bugs so you can have a romantic evening with the misses. Oh wait, I'm sorry, you have an account on Slashdot, YOU'RE NOT MARRIED!
ALL YOUR LIGHT ARE BELONG TO THE SUN.
It d doesn't do 180, I hope 130 is okay for street driving
So all they have to work on next is making it look overtly huge (when it doesn't need to be).
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Oh, God. Can you imagine what'll happen when consumers demand a single plug with both a water connection and a high-voltage electrical connection? Joe Sixpack, a puddle of water, leaking oil and a bit of gas (from the mower can) on the garage floor, and enough juice to make it all go boom. It's a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
I've been looking at bike light lately and I must say that the LED ones are quite impressive. Only three LEDs can compare with a normal bike light bulb, and the new models coming out are going to have five. And the fact that the LED lights 'burn' for about 100 hrs where a bulb would go for about 3.5hrs, makes LED lights very, very attractive.
--- to swing on the spiral...
That's red, GREEN and blue that make white. Those are the frequencies the cones in your eyes perceive. When all three are active, you sense white.
Incadescents emit ALL colors, as they are radiating blackbodies (this is also why they are inefficient). Since LEDs can only emit specific colors, they have to resort to tricks to try to mimic the fullband color of incandescents. White LEDs are like florescent bulbs: they emit ultraviolet and use a powder-coating which glows bluish-white as a result. The trick is getting the powder chemistry correct without violating more advanced florescent lightbulb patents.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Ok the real deal is that Incandesents are a bad idea for a number of reasons: High power consumption, heat pollution(Remember what happened to the pearsons puppeteers?), frequent breakdown(by the way this offsets any energy savings from their production simplicity since even a florescent will outlast 5 or 6 and an LED could outlast 10 to 20). Note: In situations of unclean electricity or poor wiring the bult in control electronics in florescents helps mitigate the problems and they will outlast a incandescent by such a huge factor as to be not worth calculating. I had a socket that kept blowing bulbs every couple weeks from the surges when the switch was hit. I switched in a florescent and its been running for over a year and a half now.
Florescents are your best bet stop gap and I hear that Ikea sells them for the best price available anywhere and they are consistently coming down in price everywhere.
LED's are the Grail. They are extremely minimalist in raw resources( a transistor and a plastic shell that will outlast 5 or 6 FLORESCENTS), they beat even florescents in energy consuption by a factor of 4 or more, solid state so droppage or shock damage are not a factor. Color is easy to fix and as for price... Who here paid 10 large(this means $10,000USD in case your not in the know) for a laptop in 1993? Ok now how many shelled out $700 this year? LED's are Diodes just like the ones the computer industry has been perfecting for decades. The price will fall. Alot.
Sidenote: All transistors and diodes produces photons as a byproduct Your computer is (depending on its transistor density, since the wavelength of the photons are dependent on the size of the transistor) currently pumping out microwave and radio energy. Since they are not optomized for this effect as LED's are they amount is reletively small and most is absorbed into the chips structure and converted to heat.
one thing i've never understood about light bulbs is why there is so much empty space in there. it is, after all, a vacuum tube, right? (ok, not exactly a vacuum, but very low pressure.) it's my understanding that if there was air (oxygen) in there, then the filament would burn up almost instantly when you turn it on, which is why it's in a vacuum. a smaller tube would have even less oxygen in it (at the same pressure), which is better, right?
but why is the tube so big compared to such a small filament? if it's a heat dissipation issue, it seems like there would be other ways to deal with it. with so much miniaturization elsewhere, why is the old light bulb not any smaller?
Not quite true. Flourescent bulbs come in a variety of different color temperatures. Incandescent bulbs are typically around 2800 K. You can get flourescent bulbs at around 3000K, at 4100 K, and at 5000K (close to daylight, which is 5500K). There are also many specialty bulbs (such as Ott-Lite) that give "true color" from flourescent bulbs. It is practically impossible to get true color from incandescent bulbs.
MIT Technology Review did a nice article on the development of LED replacements for light bulbs in the May 2003 issue. However, you need to be a paid subscriber to read this online.
The article focuses on the often secretive research going on at competing companies to develop a cost-effective white LED, which is needed to replace general illumination. Most white LEDs today are actually UV emitters with a white phosphor, reducing the efficiency. The other standard approach is to have red, green and blue LEDs together with a diffuser.
There's two basic measures for quality of white light. One is "Color temperature", which is how bluish or reddish the light looks. The other is Color Rendition Index, which tells you how true colors appear under the lights. Incandescent lamps have a color temperature of 2700-3000K (yellowish) and a C.R.I of nearly 100 (perfect).
Fluorescent tubes (and most compact fluorescents) tend to have a CRI around 82 (crappy), which is one big reason why people don't like to use them. Many also flicker and buzz and don't like to start in cold weather, but that's another issue.
So what about these LEDs? Just from the way LEDs work, I expect you might be able to get any color temperature you want, but your CRI is definitely going to be crappy. You can't approximate a continuous spectrum well with only a small number of discrete wavelengths, even if the light itself looks "white".
If you're interested in hydrogen you'll probably be interested in an article in Popular Science on how the first retail hydrogen station is opening in Iceland. Makes sense since the country has few cars and lots of geothermal electricity coming from the Reykjanes geothermal area where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates meet.
===== Murphy's Law is recursive. =====
I don't think you're right about regular light bulbs consuming fewer resources. We have a handy measure of the resources consumed to make something. It's called cost. That is, the total value of the resources used to make something. The price you pay for something that is traded as competitively as light bulbs is very close to the cost of the resources consumed making it (human and physical)
With compact florescent bulbs, the initial cost is higher ($8.00 vs. $0.20), but the lifetime cost is lower due to lower energy use and longer life. Incandescant lights are cheaper to make and better for the environment in low duty cycle applications (say in a closet), but are worse when the light is on continouslyI like my beverages with warning labels!
One of the things I like most about incandesant lights is that I can dim them. Call me ignorant, but is there a simple way to make a drop-in replacement LED "bulb" that will dim with traditional dimmers (which we know work by turning the light on and off, being off longer for dimmer lights).
If you can't dim them they're not going to be largely accepted and adopted, even at relitavely cheap price points.
Anyone care to clue me in as to if there are products like this or not yet? If so, if not - how would this work.
Thanks.
I remember reading in a Readers Digest recently about a foundation that was bringing LED lights to third world regions. I was wondering why they didn't turn their attention to the real power consumers of the world, and try to cut down on energy costs. Then I found a site that sells LED bulbs that fit into 120V sockets. (http://www.theledlight.com/120-VAC-LEDbulbs.html) The prices are outrageous. $190 US for a bulb as bright as a 30W incandescent. I don't necessarily fault the company. I'm sure these reflect the cost required to manufacture LEDs. Obviously, these need to be mass-produced before the cost will go down.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
if most people would just be smarter about what they purchase, it would go a long way in saving energy and $$$. Compact Fluorescent bulbs use about 1/4 the power and last much much longer than incandescent bulbs. A front-load washing machine uses about 1/4 the water and again, less energy than a top-load washer. And talk about automobiles; Honda and Toyota have hybrid vehicles on the road today which get over 50MPG and put out about 1/10 the emmisions of a similarly equipted car. Toyota will have a van and SUV soon that'll have the same setup and still plenty of power when you need it.
So the trick is to use what's available today and HOPE that some of these other dreams, like hydrogen powered cars, make it to the showroom floors. Because there is way too much politics playing in the game of next-gen automobile propulsion systems.
New light bulbs are great but what about what's already available. IMHO, we need to start using that first instead of waiting for the next great thing to not happen.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Q: How many companies does it take to replace the light bulb?
A: Three.
1. One firm to dream up a replacement technology and patent it without actually specifying how it is to be achieved.
2. One firm to actually develop a replacement technology and bring it to market.
3. And a firm of lawyers to sue the second firm on behalf of the first firm.
4. ???
5. Profit!
In SOVIET RUSSIA, Beowulf cluster of lighbulbs invents YOU!
Mine does that already. Maybe I need bigger fans.
The Dark Sucker Theory
For years, it has been believed that electric bulbs emit light,
but recent information has proved otherwise. Electric bulbs don't
emit light; they suck dark. Thus, we call these bulbs Dark Suckers.
The Dark Sucker Theory and the existence of dark suckers prove
that dark has mass and is heavier than light.
First, the basis of the Dark Sucker Theory is that electric bulbs
suck dark. For example, take the Dark Sucker in the room you are in.
There is much less dark right next to it than there is elsewhere. The
larger the Dark Sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark.
Dark Suckers in the parking lot have a much greater capacity to suck
dark than the ones in this room.
So with all things, Dark Suckers don't last forever. Once they are
full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the dark spot
on a full Dark Sucker.
A candle is a primitive Dark Sucker. A new candle has a white wick.
You can see that after the first use, the wick turns black, representing
all the dark that has been sucked into it. If you put a pencil next to
the wick of an operating candle, it will turn black. This is because
it got in the way of the dark flowing into the candle. One of the
disadvantages of these primitive Dark Suckers is their limited range.
There are also portable Dark Suckers. In these, the bulbs can't
handle all the dark by themselves and must be aided by a Dark Storage
Unit. When the Dark Storage Unit is full, it must be either emptied
or replaced before the portable Dark Sucker can operate again.
Dark has mass. When dark goes into a Dark Sucker, friction from
the mass generates heat. Thus, it is not wise to touch an operating
Dark Sucker. Candles present a special problem as the mass must travel
into a solid wick instead of through clear glass. This generates a
great amount of heat and therefore it's not wise to touch an operating
candle.
Also, dark is heavier than light. If you were to swim just below
the surface of the lake, you would see a lot of light. If you were to
slowly swim deeper and deeper, you would notice it getting darker and
darker. When you get really deep, you would be in total darkness. This
is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the
lighter light floats at the top. The is why it is called light.
Finally, we must prove that dark is faster than light. If you were
to stand in a lit room in front of a closed, dark closet, and slowly
opened the closet door, you would see the light slowly enter the closet.
But since dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the dark leave
the closet.
Next time you see an electric bulb, remember that it is a Dark Sucker.
Choose yer poison: Prophets or Profits
I keep seeing people say this, but it just isn't true. The reason stuff from the 50's seems to be well-built and last forever is because the crap is already broken and gone. All that's left is the good stuff. In another 53 years, nobody will remember the $40 VCRs that died in two years. But there will be people hanging onto commercial video-editing decks that really were built to last. And everyone will run around saying things like "i wish they built things as well as they did back in 2003!"
The Fire Dept in Livermore CA claims it has the worlds oldest light bulb. It's a 4 watt night light that's left on all the time, and has been burning for 103+ years.
Actually, the remarkable thing about the Hindenburg "disaster" was that it wasn't that much of a disaster by modern standards. Most of the people on board survived. There were only 36 casualties
The railroad industry is already replacing crossing light bulbs with arrays of LEDs. The typical application divides the round shape into 4 'pizza slice' quarters that are separate panels. The redundancy is such that even if one of them goes out completely, the other 3 are still working. Also, if one of the panels experiences substantial individual LED failures, it can be swapped out, leaving the others in place. As the article alludes, local governments are beginning to apply the same reasoning to traffic lights as well. In an application where the cost of the bulb pales in comparison to the labor to replace it, and the legal exposure should it fail, this one's a no-brainer.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
About an hour ago I had a discussion with my father about how LED or fluorescent lamps probably do not save as much power as advertised. Before you start talking about how little power gets converted to visible light in a normal light bulb, let me explain this further:
An incandescent light bulb is an ordinary resistor, which means that the current it draws from the net is in phase with voltage and sinus in shape.
LED and those little flourescent lamps are different. They need a rectifier to work (or are rectifiers themselves). This means that the current they draw is some ugly shape that only remotely resembles sinus. This means that this current contains a large proportion of higher harmonics (e.g. current that has 100, 150, 200, etc. Hz, ask Mr. Fourier). While your house meter may show less used kWh, these higher harmonics will cause bigger losses at your local transformer. Why? Because losses in transformer core rise with the square of frequency.
Computers with their switching power supplies already cause a lot of this kind of problems. If everyone would begin using LED lamps it would get much worse and power savings would not be that significant (they would only move from your house to transformers and power stations)
Isn't the 675 KWH per day? That should be many times more than the average residence needs, including cars.
However on NPR the other day they had a fascinating interview with this engineer who was developing cheap, sustainable light sources for 3rd world nations. Effectively he has solar panels hooked up to LEDs. They don't burn out like incandescent ones do and use very little energy. Further they are focused such that the light is more useful.
He's apparently been developing these kits and then sending them to many regions of the world where people don't have light. If you think about it, a lot of studying and education take place in the off hours when you aren't working. In these places if it is dark, this limits how people can improve their condition. Thus this is a fantastic way to really affect quality of life in these places at very little cost.
Ideally these LED sources could provide sustainable light in many places, such as rest stops, with far less maintenance and the like. The "white" light LEDs have only been out a while but already are really revolutionizing a lot. When they go mainstream for regular lighting, then as the article points out, it will really be a very good thing. It'll be cheaper and use less energy. Already most cities are converting their traffic lights over.
I started using LEDs for light when the climbing lights from places like Black Diamond came out with them. Much superior to traditional head lamps. I knew then that it was just a matter of time. So I'd really encourage people to convert. The downside right now are adaptors and then nice cheap reading lamps at places like Walmart. But it is just a matter of time. (I hate how hot my reading lamps are - I'm always afraid of falling asleep and bumping them and causing a fire -- LEDs really avoid this problem. I'd buy them if they were readily available)
Why spend $100 for an LED light bulb which uses only 40 % less power (according to the article), when you can install a Compact Flourescent for $5 and save 80 % of the power?
Most of the light bulbs in my house are 12 Watt CFs (as bright as 60 W bulbs). They last a very long time and cost less that $5 each.
I read the internet for the articles.
The transformers aren't there to convert to DC. They are there to drop the voltage from 120v to more usable levels. In fact, it is much harder to regulate DC voltage, so my computer that wants 12v DC, my CD player that wants 3v DC, and my nintendo that wants 10c DC would be out of luck in a 20v DC house.
It shouldn't be a problem. Many LED displays are already "multiplexed", which means that only one segment is on at any given time. By rapidly switching from one segment to the next, it fools your eye into believing that all of the active segments are on.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I wonder if anybody is doing failure analysis?
I betcha the City would gladly send the bulb off to someone in return for a replacement.
If interested, reply to me and I'll print it off and drop it off at City hall.
Sometimes, analyzing a part that failed in the field can yield useful insights into the failure process.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
1. Find out how many edison bulbs were manufactured, ever.
2. Find out how many are still working.
3. Grab a calculator, and do some quick math to figure out what percentage that is.
But seriously-- there are going to be counterexamples on both sides. Some things today are made to break. Some things back then were made well. The converse to both is also true. But the trend is still valid. Crap breaks and goes away, good stuff (AND bad stuff that was waaaaaay out on the edge of the bell curve for reliability) lasts long enough for people to mistakenly assume everything comtemporary to it was well made.
I think you failed to think things through all the way with your post. If Edison bulbs were good, and lasted this long, they are exactly the sort of thing I was referring to.. If they had broken, and been forgotten about, you would have posted about something else that still worked as an example of "good things from back then." Your dad's slide rule, maybe-- or a microscope you bought at an antique store.
LEDs last a long long time, but they do get dimmer over time. Normally the "lifetime" figure is based on a 50% loss in brightness.
Also, white LEDs depend on the use of phosphors to change blue light into yellow/red for warmer color. Unfortunately, the phosphors wear out faster than the LEDs, which causes the light to shift in color over time.
-Mark
"You could replace a 100-watt light bulb with a 60-watt LED, and get the same brightness,"
Better yet, you could replace a 100 watt light bulb with a 27 watt CF and get the same brightness. For about $5 at your local Target megastore. And it will last for at least five years based on my experience.
I went through my mother's house and replaced several kilowatts worth of standard bulbs with CF's (not all the bulbs in the house, but about 25% of them) and her electricity bill has gone down on average by about $50 per month (keep in mind here in Philadelphia the electricity rate is very high).
As far as zinc-air: zinc is both way too heavy and way too expensive to be a viable vehicle fuel!
Aluminum is much lighter than zinc.
It's been said that if you throw away an aluminum can, it might as well be half full of gasoline, because that's how much energy it takes to smelt aluminum oxide (from bauxite ore).
With that in mind, there are companies that have been working on aluminum-air batteries that will release the energy from aluminum by converting it back into oxide through a fuel-cell like process. It consists of a sandwich of consumable aluminum plates for the anode, a salt solution, and non-consumable yet air permeable plates for the cathodes. As the anodes corrode away, replace them, and return the used plates to a recycle center to be "recharged" by re-smelting them into aluminum metal again. Smelting aluminum is a very energy consuming process (known as the Hall-Heroult reduction process), but it is essentially the aluminum-air battery in reverse (and in massive scale).
Some chemistry know-it-alls might want to put on their thinking caps and calculate how much energy it takes to hydrolize water into hydrogen and oxygen, and how much energy it takes to turn aluminum oxide into aluminum and oxygen, but then factor in the weight vs. power output of an aluminum-air battery and weight vs. power output of a fuel cell + hydrogen storage tank.
For those who just gotta do something now, here is a link that shows you how to roll your own aluminum air battery, and then you can hook a couple in series and get back to the topic of this thread and power some LEDs.
Ok, here they are:
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_320831.html
and
http://www.firehouse.com/news/2001/6/11_bulb.html
Or do the google searh yourself:
Google Search
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