Slashdot Mirror
Smart Glass Blocks Infrared - But Only When It's Hot
klevin writes "New Scientist has an article about a new way of making sheets of glass so they block infrared energy at temperatures above 29C (84.2F). Just so long as it doesn't have to get that hot on both sides of the glass. My AC comes on way before 84F. I suppose that with double or triple paned glass, you'd only treat the exterior pane."
How's that yellow tint going to look where indoor light is already greenish from fluorescent lighting? Will we walk outside and everything will look pink or purple? Fun!
Hopefully in three years they'll give some answers to these questions and more. I've got a couple windows, but we've got no air conditioning and the heat reflects off an earthen bank, most of the heat comes through the walls.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This will severely hamper my illicit recordings of my neighbors having sex using my hidden wireless camera.
Sounds very similar to Ceramic window tinting film that is found on cars
[n8.r0n] http://petesweb.spymac.net/
If this technology comes out, a good application is to use it in cars (especially in hot areas).
How's that yellow tint going to look
Oh, that's easy, the opposite of yellow is blue, just use blue glass!
no more changing the channels on my neighbors tv/satellite set on warm summer days. Back to OTA tv viewing for me.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
(sidenote: I guess there's a new geek test out on how to actually post to this story... the Read More link being wrong and everything...)
84 degrees actually is pretty comfortable for people in the south, especially if it's going to be a dry 84 degrees, which air conditioning can help with. This can be useful, if it's not as expensive as gold, and if it really works as advertised, for people living in dry climates (read: desert southwest) who don't want to run A/C bills through the roof.
That said, I recall that while a significant percentage of heat comes from solar energy through windows... when the house is sitting in a 110 degree plain, it may not be quite as good as first thought.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
Cool!
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I don't see how you *add* dye to get the coating to let in the light that the coating is currently blocking...
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
when was the last time one of these "we'll have a commercial product ready in.." came true
wow, a worthwhile first post :)
I'd mod you up if I had points
"It's better to be a pirate then join the Navy"
Depending on the cost of the material, which is not mentioned in the article, it could be a great way to insulate from heat in the summer, while helping trap heat in winter. Specially for big glass buildings, this could translate into big savings in energy and money.
Next step is glass that turns transparent to visible light when it's hot, for example, a bathroom window what turns transparent when a hot woman (or a hot man) gets on the other side...
The yellow tint issue would have to be definitively solved before this stuff could be used on vehicles, due to some states not allowing certain colors of window tinting (red and yellow, probably reasoning that that would lower the visibility of emergency vehicles and caution lights).
How about some electronics grounding that vanadium dioxide? If set up right, when the VO2 transitions to "metallic" above 29C, the panel's photoelectric effect could harness the solar power now more highly available. That in turn could power other devices, like awnings, vent covers, or even fans, to mitigate the heat, using the sun's power against itself.
--
make install -not war
three panes of glass, separated by a short distance each. pump warm air into the two gaps. The middle glass is this infrared blocker dealy.
Or, if only one side needed to be warmed, use two panes instead of three with a small gap. The exterior pane is the infrared blocker. When it's cool outside or the window is shaded, pump warm air into the gap between panes.
IANACE
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
An interesting combination would be to incorporate it into a photosentive dye (photogrey?) like sunglasses. When it gets brighter, it gets darker. It would be useful in keeping rooms or cars from getting too bright.
Fight Spammers!
Simply sandwidtch between panes of glass and seal- that way there's no place for the shield to go, and therefore, it stays put.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yellow tint, ew, but as for the Vanadium, if you have a double paned window, treat the inner side of the outer pane. No leakage or exposure to Vanadium, unless you break the glass. And no exposure to H2S rain.
If you've got heat coming through the walls, just get some old-fashioned IR reflectors -- Aluminum Foil! Put it up to reflect heat away from your walls, and maybe an old fan to blow the heat off of it. Oh, and ripple it. Your very own House Heat Sink. Overclock your house!
Moo.
While the lowering of heat-causing agents is noble, the better scientific path (IMO) is to grab this energy and use it to power the home (solar).
Spend time and effort developing more efficient, resilient, and less-expensive tech on solar energy and every new house could be roofed with 100% solar tiles. These homes could even GENERATE enough exess energy to sell back to the grid, which would help every income level.
'Zero' dependence on energy businesses could be a very real thing for homes (oh the humanity)...
This will become a standard feature on every car sold in the south. No more jumping in your 120F car and hoping the air cools you down before you pass out.
This is wonderful, and a step in the right direction to be sure. I was actually just pondering if this kind of thing was possible the other day. Unfortunatly, buildings are still made like huge heat syncs. This is because a flat surface has a very poor surface area to volume ratio, other sky scraper shapes, such as cylinders, are even worse. R. Buckminster Fuller explains this in his Critical Path. What really elucidates this is he says if we theoretically covered all the buildings from 20th to 80th St, I think it was, in Manhatten with one large dome we would decrease the surface area exposed to the elements by a factor of 84. Consequently, it would take 1/84th of the energy to heat and cool the environment.
~Anztac
So I guess I can't make any more infrared recordings of my neighbors having sex with the curtains open. Well, not in the summer anyways.
If thought it got hotter inside your office than outside because the glass is blocking the infrared light everything in the room is re-emitting. So I would think a smart room would start letting to pass infrared light when a certain threshold temperature is reached.
The heat of the sun does not reach us by means of infrared light but mostly by the visible. Maybe New Scientist is just wrong.
These university folks are taking credit for a discovery made by Dr. Ouderkirk at 3M. As usual the actual scientist who makes the ground breaking discovering that was considered to prove "known" physcial laws false, gets no credit.
Most of the heat that comes into your house will do so by conduction from the air by the window to the glass to the air by the window, then get carried around by convection. It won't get in by radiation, so IR-proof glass will have only a small effect. If you have double glazing then you have a hefty heat buffer between your house and your environment anyway, and the buffering effect is large enough to render any conduction heat exchange negligible. What it *might* do, however, is stop your neighbours from changing the channel on your TV.
now all we need is a technology like this that will block wifi signals. ;)
Is this correct? The greenhouse effect happens precisely because the atmosphere absorbs infrared but transmits visible light - light heats the earth, the heat is re-radiated in IR, but is trapped here by the atmosphere. To cool down you want to radiate IR, not trap it?
I presume these people know what they're doing, but its sounds to me like the future holds unformfortably sticky leopardskin seats in our flying cars.
Since most windows these days use dual-paned glass for its insulating properties, presumably only the outer pane would be made of this stuff. It then shouldn't matter if the room interior is a bit less than 84 F.
The cake is a pie
You could use two panes of glass and put the coating in between the two. This would allow for better insulation and would also protect the coating from being dissolved by acid rain and the like. The article also mentioned titanium dioxide(?) to fix the substances together.
... I think I can convert this to a stealth suit and sell it to criminals. If the IR cameras can't see it when they're being chased by the cops, I think I could be in big business!
Agreed, but I've yet to be in a building where the glass was double or even triple paned. Usually it's that heavy stuff that can withstand the direct impact of a pigeon (no sparrow jokes, please.)
just get some old-fashioned IR reflectors -- Aluminum Foil!
Ever put your hand on something chromed that's been sitting in the sun long? I think a white paint would work, but that's pretty close to what we already have.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Imagine that you accidently leave the heat on too long, or that you have a fire in your house. Now the air inside is hot enough to cause the coating to phase change, and all the heat gets reflected back INTO your house, causing it to get even hotter!
Sorry, misread the parent... Realized I basically said the same thing :\
Sweet, now I won't feel so bad when I leave Grandma in the car on a hot day with the windows rolled up.
I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!
Will this keep the alien signals from entering my room? I'm running out of aluminium foil!
Well I for one see an obvious use of heat activated infrared blocking materials - for "special" crop cultivation, as a method to block infrared cameras on overhead "black helicopters".
Anyone? Anyone? Once you excuse your ramped up power requirements by bringing home a server rack, and leaving it in the home office (with fans whirring and lights blinking but not really on ), you can run a stealth garden!
Of course, you could just move to Vancouver, and grow it out in the open.
Anyone? Anyone?
Usually it's that heavy stuff that can withstand the direct impact of a pigeon (no sparrow jokes, please.)
Good firewall against IP by carrier pigeon.
Obviously I've misunderstood, otherwise this breakthrough wouldn't be worth writing about, so can someone please explain to me how greenhouses actually work, and why glass that reflects infrared wouldn't cause the room to get hotter rather than cooler?
Won't this interfere with the thermal imaging cameras fire departments use to find people in fires?
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
A better smart glass would not just block that extra thermal energy. It would find a way to convert that energy into a useable form or direct it to a useful purpose.
END COMMUNICATION
It seems to me that it would make more sense to come up with a roofing material that blocked infrared above a certain temperature. For example, I'm sure that my house gains far more heat from having the dark roof sitting out in the hot sun all day than it does from the windows. It would be *really* cool if someone set something up that would absorb IR in the winter (like a dark roof) but not in the summer (light roof). Still, I guess windows are better than nothing.
As a side benefit you won't have to wear your tin foil hat inside anymore!
May the source be with you!
If you've got heat coming through the walls, just get some old-fashioned IR reflectors -- Aluminum Foil! Put it up to reflect heat away from your walls
I hear this also helps with the mind control rays.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
In double glazed or triple glazed windows (with air space between the glass layers) I think you'd treat the outside surface of innermost pane not the outermost pane. The innermost pane has the coolest inside surface and the air spaces between panes are always hot.
Imagine living in Nevada, where you get sun for more than 300 days a year, and most of those days are high quality 90F or higher sun.
A solar home can only use so much.
A trombe wall can only absorb so much.
Even the new 10% transparent solar collectors can only do so much.
What do you do with the excess heat?
You run evaporative coolers and AC.
The only other way to shed the excess heat is to absorb it (ala these panes or burying the house underground) or redirect it, with things like geothermal heat pumps.
GPL Deconstructed
... for the old ways of construction. 3 foot thick earth-type walls, low deep overhangs for shade. Maybe those old original settlers in the southwest weren't as backwards as we think, just because they didn't have cheap electricity.......
What happens to all that infrared energy that isn't being absorbed by the interior of the building anymore? Is it absorbed by the glass/film iteself and then dissapated by conduction or convection with other nearby materials like air, glass and steel or is it reflected back outside to make other buildings and surfaces and stuff even hotter?
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
Surely by the time *anything* is 29 degrees, there is enough IR to interfere with a signal?
Except that a dry 84 degrees never occurs in the south, assuming we're talking the southern part of the US. If it''s 84, teh humidity is 90%+.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
What happens when i want to change my neighbours tv channel through the window to piss them off?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Great idea-- but since both the layer and the glass filter the color, you end up with subtractive colors, not additive. With your solution (assuming the tone and density of the vanadium & dye layers match), no light at all gets through.
Allegedly real newspaper headline from 1998:
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
Anyone know toxicity of Vanadium dioxide?
Who cares? It tastes great!!
You've never been in a building with double/triple pane glass? Where the fuck do you live, Kyrgyzstan? These windows are extremely common anywhere where heating and cooling costs are extreme. (the same places where heat-resistent glass would be useful
> there's no place for the shield to go
Errant pebble, meet windshield. Windshield, errant pebble. Whoops.
Or you could just go this route.
You did hear that Ostriches now have a variant of the bird flu? Thank God they can't fly!
Firewall be pretty handy if/when pigeons come down with something like that.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I meant that the visible light would cause the glass to darken -- not based on temprature!
Fight Spammers!
Visible light comes through the window and is absorbed by materials which start radiating that energy as IR. Auto glass is better at transmission of visible light than IR, so inside of car gets hotter. If true, it would help to have better IR transmission than to limit IR transmission.
Ask me about my vow of silence!
Michigan... California... both extremes, effectively.
First step in saving money on heating/cooling would be dual pane, but first you have to talk people into spending the money to upgrade the glass they already have -- Answer, in two words: Fat Chance. Most likely a consideration for new buildings.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Why use smart glass when you can use bricks that are.. well.. as dumb as bricks.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
Above this transition temperature, the electrons in the material alter their arrangement. This turns it from a semiconductor into a metal, and makes it block infrared light.
And you thought it was just in the movies!
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
you mean, everything would be slightly darker and the same color as before.
And since you're thinking it, that means they already got you. You're compromised. We can't have you at the meetings anymore. Er, I mean, what meetings?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
One of the reasons rooms get so hot is that ordinary glass is already blocking a lot of infrared--from getting out. Non-infrared (ordinary visible) light comes through easily and strikes whatever is inside. In doing so, it heats it, so a portion of the visible light is converted to infrared. But, since the glass isn't very permeable to infrared, it can't get out, so the inside space heats up.
This innovation will make it even harder for infrared to get out, but it also reduces the infrared that gets in. So the question is whether the inside heats up more with visible light converted to infrared that can't get out at all, or visible plus some infrared converted to even more infrared that can get out a little bit.
I suppose they've done the experiment, but it's not obvious to me which one would be superior or by how much.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
If I am right about this, then cars would be exactly where you don't want this stuff.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
I've worked in the glass industry for over three years, acutally for one of the direct competitors of the people (Pilkington) who came up with this. Coating glass almost always (90% of the time) requires an insulated (two lites of glass) unit. The coating goes on the inner surface because it is easy to scratch the coating off, and since its a near vaccum inside insulated units they don't have to worry about what ambient conditions will do to the coating. Now the yellow tint will be a non-issue come production time. It realy will be either applying it to glass that is already tinted to cancel out the yellow or they'll modify the formula to get it to appear clear. And the fact that it eventually wears out will either be adjusted for in the R&D process (not likely, too expensive), or offering some kind of warranty on it. It is cheaper to re-produce because of the scale of glass plants, than it would be for the R&D to get another year or two of useful life. The process of coating itself is very very interesting. They pretty much ionize particles to bond at a molecular level to the glass. It's a niche field, but one that is very lucrative because there are not that many people in it. And as far as costs are concerned, it should be rather cheap. Glass itself costs around 1-5 cents (US) per squarefoot. A float glass plant produces around 650 tons of glass a day. The process is really really efficient.
Not an ideal solution, but take a hose to your "hot" wall. The water evaporates and hopefully the heat blows away in the breeze instead of just baking your house and everything inside.
It works, even if not very well, and it's relatively cheap. Not something you want to do every day forever but on a couple of those screaming hot summer days it works well enough.
If they get this working and get rid of the yellow tint, I'd definitely buy a car that had the coating on the windows. I'm so sick of getting in my car and hardly being able to touch the steering wheel it's so hot (and I have a light colored car, with a dark car, it's torture). It would also be a great savings on home AC bills.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
Since you want the coating to react to inside temperature, I would think the coating would need to be on the inside Pane and probably on the inside side of the inside pane (say that a few times fast)
wanted: one clever sig,apply within
Remember any of the food dyes?
I wonder how long before there is a scam or fact that "chemically artificially tinting light" can lead to cancer...
The automotive and construction industries would have a FIT!
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
bwahahahahaha........man thats really feeble. I am from Minnesota and have been living in Austin, Texas for 20 years. Let me tell you, if you think 84 is hot, you need to get out more. 105 is hot. 84 is nice. A ceiling fan and a cold beer should get you by just fine without too much trouble. No wonder your power grids are in a shambles.
In Tokyo, law requires large buildings to have roof gardens to prevent the roofs from getting so hot. Plants will use that energy to grow, instead of letting that energy hit concrete, metal, etc and become heat. Its estimated that tokyo would be 10 degrees hotter on average without the roof gardens.
It will be interesting to see which one can be made clear first. A single-pane window that insulates like a tightly-sealed glass window with 10-20 panes would be nice. Although I'm a bit surprised that aerogel isn't being used in more applications today. (NASA only recently licensed the technology to a company, so perhaps we'll see more of it soon.)
So, would a fanny up on the pane give rise to a new meaning to...
"yer ass is GLASS"?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
here is a google reference, first hit actually:
e .h tml
http://membership.acs.org/P/PMSE/awards/creativ
The recipient of the 2004 ACS Creative Invention Award is Dr. Andrew J. Ouderkirk. Dr. Ouderkirk has received this award for his role as the principal inventor and project leader of the groundbreaking 3M(TM) Multilayer Optical Film (MOF) technology, a core technology within 3M's Light Management platform. The MOF technology uses birefringent polymers in the manufacture of reflective film polarizers and high efficiency mirrors. Dr. Ouderkirk now holds the title of 3M Corporate Scientist in the 3M Company. In addition, he recently became a member of 3M's prestigious Carlton Society in recognition of his pioneering work in the development of the optical film technology.
yada yada yada, more at URL
Looks like he is joe brain
If you've got heat coming through the walls, just get some old-fashioned IR reflectors -- Aluminum Foil! Put it up to reflect heat away from your walls, and maybe an old fan to blow the heat off of it. Oh, and ripple it.
Actually, we used this technology on a west-facing window whose transparency was a bug, not a feature. It gave a great view of the neighbor's bathroom window, but was perfectly situated for the summer sun to beat down on the dining room table (and all its occupants).
A layer of aluminum foil -- secured in place with duct tape, of course -- took care of both problems.
Here's my question: I tried to make the new "coating" ripple-free. Was that a mistake? Since the comment has mods of Insightful, Interesting, and Funny, I don't know what to think.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
https://www1.fishersci.com/Coupon?gid=35397&cid
Someone chime in/correct me, but...
One thing to consider is that some glass manufacturers used to or still warn against doing things such as placing foil or reflector surfaces on the INSIDE of dual-paned glass.
The reason is the reflected light builds up the heat inside the dual pane, raising the temp above the design level. In some cases the glass may explode due to the gas sandwiched between the panes.
Treating the inner pane may be a good idea, but if careless, ignorant, or reckless consumers put black film or silver film or foil on the panes, their "ass could be glass" if they happen to be nearby during an explosion.
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Occupants should be OK as longa as the glass is not sandwiching between the panes any xylene or carbon tetrachloride...
Maybe the makers can insert rods like the neon kind, or design self-shaping channels linke see-thru ant farms so that during holidays, at night, they can turn the buildings into art.
Or, they can camouflage the buildings in the US when we hit Condition Orange.
Or, this could be used for bicylists who want a transparent cocoon, but don't want the tan...
Or, battlefield troops could survive in the desert, "to a degree" (pun intended) while awaiting sunset for night movements, or for survival purposes... Dropping lots of these could confuse enemy targetting systems, as they might cause ordnance to be wasted on bogus targets...
"You could add another substance, like titanium dioxide, to fix it to the glass," he told New Scientist. "And you could use a dye that would cancel out the yellow."" Would going to Titanium Trioxide or Plutonium Heptide or Hexane Arsenide alleviate fears of Condition Yellow?"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Hey, that hybrid lighting system is neat. I noticed that it specifically mentions using the infra-red portion to generate electricity. What happens to the ultra-violet portion? If it's not efficiently blocked, skin cancer would be a concern.
The article just says "blocks" If the glass blocks by absorbing IR then this would be a problem in double pane windows. The outer pane (or is it lite?) would become dramatically hotter and would expand more than inner one. This could break the seal between the two sheets and release any enclosed gas (argon fill is commonly used to reduce convective currents that transfer heat) as well as allow moisture in causing fogging. This was apparently a problem with some do it some do-it-yourself window tints. I don't know much chemistry but they say it's metal-like above transition temp so maybe that means it reflects. BTW I have now idea why Argon would reduce convective currents. Anyone know? I just know that lower convection is a property of heavy gasses
no light at all? so the glass filters *all* non-yellow light? it's not just a "tint". very curious.
let me guess. you just had a unit on light in your intro science class?
Some quick Googling didn't turn up safety or toxicity data. That's kind of disquieting, since it implies that the material hasn't been deployed or tested much.
I try to avoid brand new construction materials. Let other people find the problems that show up ten years down the road.
Hope it works -- nifty idea!
Sure, ...in Japan!
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
All I know is that I've spent a lot of time working with cheap-ass tools lavelled "Chrome Vanadium" and I'm still just fine.
I think.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
not to mention overrated. ;)
;)
the ripple thing was a joke. if you were actually trying to bleed heat off from the inside, you would want it rippled with a fan, and attached to your house with heat-conductive goo.
Moo.
It's safer to wear the aluminum on your head, because the rays can still penetrate your walls, unless you live in a glass house and you put up foil over the entire thing.
Passive solar heating of homes is becoming popular, and it relies on allowing sunlight to come in and heat up a large mass (usually a floor or wall built with extra mass to soak up the energy). The overhang of the roof on the south side of the house is calculated to keep the sunlight from coming in through the windows during the warmer months.
So a careful house design will make this product much less useful. Though I suppose it would still be useful to have a window that only let infrared light pass one way. Then, assuming you could flip the window easily, you could keep infrared in during the winter and out during the summer.
People who mod correctly don't get to keep mod points. The zealots outnumber the rest and meta-mod with the same bias. I lost my mod points by using them to reverse mod all the +1 informative "linux rules/windows sucks" posts that were redundant flamebait.
Of course, red tinting limits little, if any, red. It could make it harder to distinguish red from white. BLUE light is attenuated; green might look kinda dull yellowish.
OTOH, A sharp blue tint could make red and yellow (emergency) lights difficult to see... up to invisible if one got legalistic about the wording I saw on a Kansas website. If I were to ban any color for safety reasons, it'd surely be blue.
Perhaps Kansas's lawmakers reasoned that we'd evolve our way around their apparent stupidity. =^>
"Inquiring Minds Want to Know!"
Just so you know, more than half the world's population live in places like I do (Belo Horizonte, SE Brasil) where THE FUCKING ROOM TEMPERATURE IS COMPATIBLE WITH HUMAN LIFE ALL YEAR LONG -- that is, between 12C and 35C normally (50-100F?), ranging in extremis from 0C to 45C (30-120F). This includes most of India, large portions of Africa, most of South America, large parts of East Asia, Middle East, large parts of Oceania...
You deserved the flamebait moderation.
Now, even for that kind of places (as I said in other post) car windows would be great with this glass...
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Good for your neighbourhood grow house. Police Choppers with infared cameras fly overhead in search of heat blooms from grow houses. If it blocks it coming in, should block it going out too.
No sig... For shame.
But, you want Aluminum foil that only works above
20 degrees (celsius)!
Unfortunately, many of those screaming hot summer days coincide with the yearly drought season (how can it be a drought if it happens every year?). Drough season usually puts an end to car-washing and lawn watering. I'd bet house watering would fall under the same restrictions.
How do you think Twinkies get their yellow tint?
Of course I realize that doesn't answer the toxicity question...
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Anyone know toxicity of Vanadium dioxide?
See the MSDS for vanadium dioxide, CAS RN: 12036-21-4.
I would expect that before this comes into commercial use there will be more thorough studies and inquiries into its safety.
Additionally to planting trees, do like the mediterraneans: paint the house with whitewash and build with materials that do not retain heat (or you could end up with a house just like mine: in the summer, it gets much hotter than the exterior - it's like a pizza oven, effectively).
Someone with mod point, come on. Give this guy a "Funny".
*sigh* back to work...
I lived for a year in sunny Madrid.
And I took some weeks to get used to their -15C winter.
But you really have to take in consideration my clothing today [very cold (to us) winter day: 8C (47F) min, 23C (73F) max. -- current temperature]. I left my home at 07:45am, wearing black pants, t-shirt, and a Hard Rock Cafe sweater(*) (which I got off by 3pm).
When I was in Madrid's winter, I had three to four kilos of wool clothing on to go out...
And, no, 18C (65F) is cold to me. I would have to put my sweater back on. 23C (73F, the temperature right now (5pm)) is comfortable in my t-shirts.
(*) is this the right name of this clothing piece?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Vanadium is a common alloying element in steel. The two MSDS pages I found indicate that the powdered oxide isn't very good to breathe or eat, but the amount released by breaking a window is probably so small that you wouldn't notice. The biggest hazard would be to people working in the manufacture of such windows.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
With all the radiation boncing back and forth, the poor plant would get roasted by the end of the day!
(Of course, I'm exaggerating, but if we were surrounded with efficiently UV reflective surfaces woudn't this add to the risk of skin cancer??? This reminds me of a crazy ad in Robocop 1 or 2, that depicted a sort of new sunscreen - a blue-colored cream. To achieve maximal protection, the user would pass such a thick coat of the sunscreen that the user would end up looking like a Smurf!)
The blackbody curve of solar radiation has a peak in about the green wavelengths. The curve falls rapidly as the wavelengths get shorter (bluer), which is why it takes minutes instead of seconds to get a sunburn even under the most intense sunlight. But the curve slopes off much more gently to the red end of the spectrum (see this page).
Sustainability and energy independence essay
"Orthodoxy is unconsciousness" - Orwell
Around here, all the drivers seem to be using a window tint that makes it hard to distinguish red from green.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Let me just rephrase what you are saying to make sure that I got it right: Even though opacity to IR will "trap" some of the energy inside (a car or a greenhouse), opacity to IR will prevent more from getting in in the first place.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Though those who developed the "perfect mirror" are busy applying this technology to new long-range fiberoptics (called "omniguide"), I think the most interesting part of the perfect mirror is the ability to "tune" the mirror to specific frequencies of light. That is, this one will block infrared heat at All temperatures, if desired. Google for more thorough descriptions.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
It's even more lopsided than that, because the IR coming in and going out are so wildly different in wavelength. The IR coming into the car from the Sun is around 7000-14000 angstroms, where glass is reasonably clear; in the wavelengths radiated by objects around 300-400 Kelvin, glass is opaque. (If you wear glasses with glass lenses, look at your image in a thermal camera sometime. They will look cold while your face looks warm; the thermal IR from your skin and eyes does not go through them.)
Sustainability and energy independence essay
The infrared emitted by the Sun is at very short (blue) wavelengths compared to the infrared emitted by objects on the Earth. This should not be surprising, because the wavelength peak of blackbody emissions is proportional to the absolute temperature and the Sun is about 20x as hot as the Earth. The properties (transparency, reflectance) of things like the atmosphere and glass are very different for those two bands.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
The "South" typically includes the southeast, and often times you aren't in the "South" if you aren't in a state that fought with the Confederacy.
I think you are nitpicking here, as the definition of a word is determined by its usage. People are not going to think Arizona when they here the "South". It is strange though, that Arizona is in the "Southwest" but Georgia is just in the "South."
When it gets confusing is when you try to determine where a state like Oklahoma fits. We could be part of the "South", but most southerners don't consider it to be, because it was not a state during the civil war. (Regardless of the fact many indian tribes were split down the middle: half the Cherokee nation fought for the Confederacy; half fought for the union.)
Midwesterners don't count Oklahoma as "Midwest" because we aren't north enough or in some cases, east enough.
If you say "South-central", which is what many geography books call it, people just look at you funny.
And I thought I was the only one to see those movies...
Best part of Escape from LA: Insane Plastic Surgeons
Every house I've lived in has come with dual pane glass.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
I'm not sure, but I do believe that this exactly happened in Germany. IIRC a law to ban drivers from wearing blue sunglases was proposed.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Or where sound insulation is a good thing.
I live in SF, where our normal monthly electricity bill, including heating (no cooling needed, thank you) is the $52 minimum charge, despite having multiple computers on most of the time. So we don't need double-paned glass to reduce the cooling costs, but my apartment building has it to reduce the sound of the firetrucks that come racing past several times a day.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
Am I the only visually-oriented person here? Where are the pictures of the windows?
-- http://uncannyvalley.org/
make it using triple pane glass, only coat the middle pane. Hook that pane up to high-voltage electrodes, jack it up so the glass is heated to 84 degrees no matter what the outside tempeture is. Of course, the outside tempeture might "leak over" to the middle pane, but it's a thought.
I think you may be confusing infrared with ultraviolet. Most glass will block UV light, so special forms of glass need to be made for greenhouses.
its no wonder that US citizens use up so much of the worlds energy resources,
given they seem to only feel "comfortable" in a very narrow temperature range.
get real, get un-comfortable.
fool! Everyone knows yellow and blue makes green!
who's gots me lucky charms?
you dont *have* to heat the glass... if you use it for the simple purpose of blocking IR (that is, heat) into your home, then 29 degrees seems to be a pretty reasonable cut off
have the special glass be the middle pane of three, and it should head up to 29 degrees in no time, and when its cold outside, it would automatically allow whatever warmth in can into the house
i reckon it would be a handy way to save money on ac too, if the ac only needs to cool from a 29 degrees point (and not 35 or 40!)
The glasses would work 9 months here in Arizona :).
In addition to planting deciduous trees and vines (on trellises), other options include: orientation on the site to optimise solar exposure for different times of the day/night; clever use of ventilation and insulation - consider how heat will move through the building as air currents and accomodate those to stop the building from storing heat in the summer or losing heat in the winter; the use of eaves and awnings designed to keep summer sun from directly hitting windows, but allowing winter sun to reach them.
There are dozens of options, most of them derived from indigenous design from differing geographic locations and climates - adobe construction is one example
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Bring your own tree. If anyone asks, you're preparing for Christmas.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
First off light will still get through, but, onto the the main problem of the parent's post (not really a problem, it was modded funny): anyone who has ever played with the keychain ring of tinted plastic in kindergarden knows that with the parent's solution, you get green. The appropriate color to achieve a colorless tint would be purple, as it, not blue, is the "opposite" color of yellow.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
1. Vanadium and tungsten are not poisonous - vanadium compounds are actualy in clinical trials as drug candidates for treatment of diabetes.
2. H2S (sulfane) makes farts smelling like farts. Sulfane is not contained in acid rain. (Sulfuric acid is).
3."Cancelling" the unpleasant yellowish tint through complementary color will probably make the glass looking nicely brown. Corporate characters would not mind.
That's the first time I've ever seen a moderation request mod'd as funny.
Things have been going to hell in the 3 months since I last had any mod points, and I'm starting to wonder: why haven't I had any mod points for 3 months? My Karma's 'Excellent', and has been all along. I meta moderate regularly. When I moderate, I do so conscientiously. I used to get mod points about every 2-3 weeks. What is going on?
Energy loss by radiation is not very effective for things below a few hundred Kelvin. Radiative heat loss is proportional to T^4 (Stefan-Boltzmann law) where T_sun = 6700K and T_car = 400K. Heat loss by convection should be far more efficient, i.e. letting some air circulate.
Living in Western Australia, where peak summer temperatures are in the range of 47-49C (117-120F), this glass would come into effect too early to allow the house to warm. In summer, aircon generally won't be turned on until it hits at least 40C (104F).And at only 29C, I'd only just be getting close to thinking about moving into summer clothes. Many people would still be wearing heavy winter clothes. I think all the bloody yanks should stop trying to find ways to keep their houses freezing, and just toughen up and live with some warm days in summer. Many people I know don't even have aircon in their houses, and we all still survive. Cold showers do wonders (after you run the water long enough so it doesn't come out scalding).
I think you're getting your colour spaces mixed up. Blue + yellow = green only in a subtractive colour space e.g paint or ink. Go look at the circular colour selector in any paint program. Opposite of yellow is blue.
Imagine white light coming in through the window. If this coating has a yellowish tint, then it must filter out a lot of the blue spectrum, leaving most of the red-green end of the spectrum. If you then have blue glass, it will filter out most of the red-green light. Unfortunately, you might not have much light left after going through the two filters. But it would remove the strong colour tint.