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Researchers Create New Cheap, Shatterproof, Plastic Light Bulbs
hattig writes "US researchers say they have developed a new type of lighting that could replace fluorescent bulbs. The new light source is called field-induced polymer electroluminescent (Fipel) technology. It is made from three layers of white-emitting polymer that contain a small volume of nanomaterials that glow when electric current is passed through them. The developer is promising cheap, hard-to-break, mercury-free, highly efficient bulbs from 2013."
The funny thing about florescent tubes is how recently they became 'controversial'. Essentially all the R&D was in place for conventional hot-cathode tubes by the late 30s, and they were owning the commercial, industrial, and other cost-sensitive bulk sectors. And these were the good shit: Mercury, beryllium, the kind of stuff that wasn't good for you even in the '50s, back when smoking and liquid lunches were doctor-approved...
Once they became symbols of tyrannical envirofascist totalitarianism, though, you'd have thought that they'd started filling the things with nerve gas.(Amusingly, the bulk commercial/institutional users still don't give a fuck. Just stay after hours at any giant cube farm or similar and you'll see the janitors shoving around garbage cans full of old tubes, half of them broken, without the slightest concern...)
Capitalist: Noun
1) Some other guy that is making money, while I sit whining in my mother's basement.
I wonder what the lifespan of these bulbs is going to be ...
The Light Bulb Conspiracy
The developer is promising cheap, hard-to-break, mercury-free, highly efficient bulbs
Historically the three problems with EL have been color balance (or total lack thereof), lifespan (maybe a year at full power), and surface brightness (like forget "lamps" you'll need to cover the entire ceiling with illuminated panels to get modest room illumination).
What the developer is promising has been off the shelf for at least 3 decades... What I listed is the really hard part.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It's also the government that has to clean up the land fills and ground water when they get sued for letting people dump so much mercury into them. So their only failure is in not educating the public and not providing better recycling facilities. Also, it's the local governments that have to deal with these problems, while the federal government is the one mandating CFL use.
I've heard a lot of concerns lobbed at capitalism from fellow nerds on here, but never that it didn't make things cheap. At the cost of human rights, the environment, natural resource depletion, sure... but cheap.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Is issue isn't if the Old People are Right or Wrong, but their reasoning for their decision.
Often the argument is driven by a nostalgic emotional attachment, and not by any rational measuring of the advantages vs disadvantages.
A lot of people miss leaded gasoline, because they miss the sweeter smell it gave off, vs. the harsher unleaded gasoline smell. Is a slightly better smell while filling your tank worth having hazardous chemicals in the air, and a residue that can get on your hands that is harmful as well?
Or those people who often buy unpasteurized milk on the black market. Because they claim it tastes better and has nutrition. Does the difference in taste and a minor improvement in nutrition outweigh the serious illnesses you can get from it?
If you go across hating everything, you can always nitpick and hang onto that one redeeming feature no matter how minor it is. Or you can jump on the bandwagon and say everything that comes out is immediately superior. Or you can just be balanced and actually stop thinking you are an expert in everything, and try it out, and/or read about it from many sources and judge for yourself if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is no longer needed. Some countries are phasing out even CFLs in favor of LEDs, for example China by 2016 won't allow sale of units over 15w. LEDs are already "shatter proof" and they don't carry any gases inside ("solid state").
China will ban imports and sales of certain incandescent light bulbs starting October 2012 to encourage the use of alternative lighting sources such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), with a 5-year plan of phasing-out incandescent light bulbs over 100 watts starting October 1, 2012, and gradually extend the ban to those over 15 watts on October 1, 2016. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/05/us-china-light-bulbs-idUSTRE7A40MV20111105
I have a couple of 10w (4x 2.5w pcs) LED flood lamps, they are too strong for direct lightning but pointing them up allows the light to reflect and diffuse back down nicely. They come up instantly and there is no flickering. Unfortunately they get a little too hot at the base because of the AC/DC transformer, thankfully i'm not enclosing them but overheating could be a problem for others. Perhaps we should adopt some form of DC power distribution inside the house to keep away this conversion from the lamps (and so many devices use DC anyway).
Have you seen white LED street lamps? I have, and they work perfectly. They are also instant (instead of minutes) and the light lets you see many more colors at night. They are about 80w to 100w, instead of the usual 250w, and happen to last 10x more.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
What would the incentive to make such a device in a non-capitalistic economy?
I don't think you realize how much cheap stuff we have today in America?
If you look at prices today and that of 60 years ago and adjust of inflation we will see that a lot of the stuff of the past was more expensive then it is today. Heck we have a lot of things that would be excessively expensive back in the day. Our $200 cellphones would have cost millions of dollars for the same power. And they were paying a hefty price for the normal phones which we would be able to get for under $10.00.
It isn't that businesses are making things more expensive it is that we as a culture are demanding more things.
Back in the old days for your monthly bills
Mortgage, Car, Power, Telephone.
Today
Mortgage, Car, Power, Telephone, Internet, Cell Phone, Cable TV, Netflix...
Expected homes of the 1950 would be small 1000sq/ft homes. Once Car for the family, one Telephone and they will only call rarely,
For power they would power lights, heat, the refrigerator, washer and dryer, and a TV. All ran on AC power, and most when not in use were turned off.
If we were to live like we did during the 1950's we would have huge amounts of income stored up more then ever, because we would be living extremely modestly.
It isn't that things got more expensive they actually gotten cheaper, we just got more things.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It seems to me a light source that is inherently flat would be ideal for a display backlight. It probably won't make them much thinner than they already are, but it could make them less complex to produce and possibly more repairable (by replacing aged backlights).
Also, being able to attach these directly to walls and ceilings rather than mounting brackets or cutting holes for lamps would allow a wider placement of light sources than is currently practical. I'd probably have (at least) one on every wall plus some on the ceiling, to make sure that I could get an ideal spread of light sources for whatever work I might be doing.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
I see a flicker from florescent lights. CFLs and bar style. Bugs the crap out of me. Had to switch to torchiere style lights so it at least bounces off the ceiling first. They cause me headaches over a long period of time. I switched a lot of my lights I use most commonly to LEDs around the house and it helped. Point being, sometimes people don't hate something because it's different. Haven't bought an incandescent bulb in years, because I'm energy conscious, but I can see where others might not want to subject themselves to headaches because someone else says they can't buy the bulbs they like.
Watch for Penguins, they eat Apples and throw rocks at Windows.
The bulb backlash is driven mostly by a political divide. The US is very much a two-faction country, politically - the liberals and the conservatives, represented by their respective political parties. Environmental causes have long been seen as a very liberal thing, so those on the conservative faction feel they are obliged to downplay the issue and oppose any solution.
For TL tubes, you can get dimmable electronic ballasts which convert the power grid frequency to something in the 10 kHz range. I have one hanging over the dining room table, and it's wonderfully silent and flicker-free. The only drawback is the price (~$40).
A "normal" A19 soft white bulb is about 14.5 Lumens per Watt.
A typical CFL is around 55 Lumens per Watt
A good LED bulb is around 90 Lumens per Watt (and they're getting better)
Fipel bulbs are "Highly Efficient".
Anyone have an idea what that is in Lumens per Watt?
Outside of that, these do sound a bit too good to be true...
So did VCRs, affordable computers, cell phones, the end of polio, my having an eye operation that cured my lifelong nearsightedness and my age related farsightedness...
Free Martian Whores!
Well given how you've managed to reach your own conclusions based on no evidence, the reasoning for the imposition should be self-evident.
Only the oldest CFLs used a magnetic ballast at line frequency; virtually all on the market today use a high frequency (> 10 kHz) switching supply to in order to reduce the size and cost of the transformer.
If your CFLs are perceptibly flickering, it is due to some other device affecting the power quality (large appliance motors, usually).
Older and "bargain" tube-style fluorescent fixtures use magnetic ballasts, so it isn't uncommon for those to flicker.
Sometimes perceived flicker is due to vibration (jiggling eyeballs).
View the light source through a moving electric fan blade.
If you can see blade images (think wagon wheels in the movies), you have a magnetic ballast light source.
I'm pretty sure that no human can perceive flicker faster than ~110 Hz.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.