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Fiber Optics Bring the Sun Indoors
Sterling D. Allan writes "Fiber optics transmit light, so why not take the light from outside and transmit it inside? According to an exclusive story at PESN, that is what Tennessee company, Sunlight Direct, is now doing. Their 4-foot-diameter solar dish will light 1000 square feet inside -- minus the harmful UV rays -- rendering a more natural lighting feel, which can be hybridized with florescent and possibly LED lighting to provide a constant light level, though the tone changes with the level of light outside. The GPS-based sun-tracking mechanism uses very little energy. Now you can save electricity, cut on heat emissions by incandescent, and improve the feel of your work environment. Beta testing began in June. Product expected in the market in 2007."
I remember seeing pictures of these on Japanese office buildings in the early 80s. They were called "Sunflowers", and they were mostly prototypes I think, and had a honeycomb set of collectors which piped the sunlight into the building.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
I moved my office from a building where we had NO windows. Productivity has gone up tremendously. We don't feel as worn out at the end of the day, and we don't feel like we missed out on anything.
I saw this on the Discovery channel, and it's fantastic for commerical space as you can distribute 'natural' light all over the office where windows can't be located. It saves on energy use as well. As yes, there are UV filters.
I wish it was a little more affordable, i'd do it in a heart beat.
The article specifically says that it does:
As for the solar panels, I would think that they'd be a lot more expensive. (Disclaimer: I haven't actually checked.) The systems I've seen require large banks of batteries to store power, and there are a lot of expensive system components.
One nice thing about solar lighting is that there's really not much else other than a mirror and a bunch of fiber optic cables. It's a pretty simple system made of relatively cheap parts.
Also, one of the selling points of the company's Web site is that the lighting is all natural, not artificial, which is supposedly preferable for happy attitudes and such.
Of course, not having any lights at night or on cloudy days would totally suck. The article mentions that the system can be integrated with supplimental artifical lighting. Perhaps a combination of solar panels and solar lighting would be the best system if one wants cheap, eco-friendly lighting that is also mostly natural for happy attitudes.
It's not worthless. The system works amazingly well. The problem? Cost. Fiber optics and installation were not cheap- at least when the Ark Mori building was built. These days however? Costs have plummeted and energy costs have risen. It is an ideal time for this system to make a comeback. And the light quality? Amazing from what I heard from a friend who visited the building while she was working in Japan.
-sirket
a)the earth's magnetic field does reverse every so often, b)we're overdue (by a huge margin) and c)we probably would be slightly fucked, because during the flip, we'd have no protection from cosmic and solar radiation.
NOVA
Wikipedia Article on Geomagnetic Reversal
As for the aliens- yep, she's off her rocker on that one, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Please help metamoderate.
In short. No. The trouble is in the absorption of photons by your reflective trap. See, even the most perfectly reflective surfaces we're capable of making (~99.999% reflective) are not good enough to do this. There is a technique for measuring the reflectivity of these (VERY) expensive mirrors called cavity ring-down where a laser pulse is injected into a cavity created with a highly reflective mirror and you watch how quickly that light pulse decays and this tells you very accurately the reflectivity of the thing. After only some tens of microseconds you are left with mere fractions of a percent of your original pulse. So in short, even with super reflective walls, your photon storage unit will still very efficiently convert those initial photons to heat in short order.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
My parents have one of these in their kitchen. Works very well, actually, and the light is very white and pleasant. This is much better than a skylight for several reasons. The first is that the light is not directional, but very diffuse, giving good light all over. Second, you don't really have to clean the dome. Third, it goes through your insulation, and is sealed at both ends, keeping a decent separation of you from the hot/cold. Finally, it's pretty small and easy to install yourself if you're handy with a caulk gun. I'd definitely get one of these if I had a house.
I've seen the Mori Building solar collectors (on TV). The idea was that they could transport natural light into areas of the building that are not near windows, and that sunlight seems to make people happier. And they didn't need GPS to do it because the sun is, y'know, fairly predicable.
But you're right that light fibers aren't exactly big news for illumination. And they're not the only medium with low transmission losses, either. About 20 years ago, a friend of mine started up a company called TIR Systems to commercialize a light pipe technology that he developed in grad school. It works approximately like optical fiber but the prism light guide is much larger, and also requires less elaborate manufacture. The early materials that I saw were pressed out of large slabs of acrylic or something. At any rate, it seems much better suited to architectural application than bundles of optical fiber. And that's old news too.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Of course, as (almost) always, Wright's vision was just a wee bit ahead of the materials science of the day; the whole setup used to leak like crazy. But what the hell -- it sure was gangbusters back in 1939, when the future was invented.
Yes, the Japanese called this "piped sunlight" and was featured on the early 80s TV show "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" hosted by Jack Palance.
It was also used to grow gargantuan tomato plants. Like bigger than twice my house.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Ah, yes, I should have googled this first.
Particularly interesting experiments were conducted by the late Dr. Kei Mori of Kao University in Tokyo. Dr. Mori raised plants under special light that filtered out IR and UV radiation. His unique process of fiberoptic sunlight collection and transmission, called "Himawari Sunlighting", is now marketed worldwide. At first Mori feared the filtered light would be detrimental. But after extensive experiments he claimed it could promote healing and "because the ultraviolet is blocked, this sunlight does not fade fabrics or damage skin." (Gilmore, Elaine, "Sunflower over Tokyo," Popular Science, May 1988, p. 75.) One long-lived tomato plant was grown in a special nutrient-rich solution to be exhibited at the Japan Expo '85. Under piped sunlight and controlled atmosphere, this tomato tree grew over 30 ft high and yielded more than 13,000 ripe tomatoes during the six months of the Expo! (Hiroshi, Koichibara, "Tomatomation," UNESCO Courier, March 1987.)
Read More"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins