Researchers Create New Cheap, Shatterproof, Plastic Light Bulbs 296
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."
I am having a vision of the future... (Score:4, Funny)
Everything is cyclical, I guess...
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Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:5, Informative)
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).
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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.
Um, what does "bouncing it off the ceiling" do to reduce flicker?
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:4, Interesting)
Ah, my mistake. I didn't realize his house had 400-mile ceilings. (186000 miles/sec, divided by 240 half-cycles per second to map maximum to minimum-intensity phase, divided by 2 because it's a round trip.)
There is no way that bouncing light off the walls can reduce flicker, unless the flicker is in the megahertz range (in which case it WILL NOT be perceptible), or the walls are coated with a phosphor that has significant persistence. (And even in that case, the light isn't "bouncing" off the walls, but being absorbed and re-emitted.)
In fact, if GGP's golden eyes were truly that sensitive to flicker, I'd expect bouncing the light off the ceiling to make things worse, because then the flickering light would completely fill his peripheral vision, which of course is far more sensitive than central vision to flicker and motion.
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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True, but the amplitude of the oscillation is much less for incandescent since the filament barely starts to cool before the next pulse hits it. As for LEDs, where are you getting that 500Hz number, or is that a typo? A trivial circuit such as often used for Christmas lights will strobe at the power frequency of 50/60Hz - easily visible as "strobe trails" if you wave your hand quickly without other light sources. A slightly more expensive circuit including a full-wave rectifier (4 diodes) will double the
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:4, Interesting)
He said mitigated, not prevented. I've (unintentionally) measured the oscillating light output of an incandescent while I was developing an optical trigger circuit for my last job, the intensity dropped by ~20% for this particular bulb (20W desk lamp) during the AC zero crossing. The flickering was 100Hz (funnily enough) - higher than most peoples' periphery will notice.
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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I'm fiscally conservative, and see conservation as a smart financial move. However, it has to be practical as well. How will these lights perform in cold weather? All my interior lights are CFL, but outdoors I've switched half of them back to higher-wattage incandescents than before (because the lower wattage units are not as available now) because once the temperature falls below 55F, CFLs take a very long time to reach full brightness.
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You should try some different bulbs... I live in the Denver area, and I have a CFL on my porchlight that lights up instantly every time, no matter how cold it is. Different brands can make a lot more difference than they should.
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Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:4, Insightful)
only true if the bulb actually lasts as long as its supposed to.
i've had incandescents last years.
i've had cfl's last months, even weeks.
guess which one is easier on the bank when you have to replace it early and is beyond the store's replacement time limit, even with a receipt?
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:4, Interesting)
In both those cases, though, there's a large entity that should be responsible, but isn't being held responsible:
BTW, I can't say I've seen many plastic bags floating around Wal-Mart parking lots. Maybe you just live in an area where people suck. :-D
You're right about the cost of the bags being spread out across all of the merchandise, of course. But the numbers don't add up for most people. On average, that bag costs about four cents to the retailer. On average, a similarly sized trash bag costs about a quarter. So at about 16% reuse, the grocery bags end up being cheaper. My reuse percentages are at least that high, because I typically pick up plastic bags only when I'm carrying lots of small things and don't waste them on single items or on large items like milk or soda bottles. I certainly can't speak for others in that matter. (Admittedly, this minimal approach to bag consumption is directly correlated with the trend towards self-check registers at stores; baggers at stores tend to overbag; one could probably say, then, that my minimal consumption of plastic bags is caused by me being lazy, but I prefer to put a positive spin on it.)
Also, the factor of six cost difference between the "free" bags and the bags you actually buy in stores is largely because the actual trash bags are made of thicker plastic and have to be transported across the country inside cardboard boxes that add considerable weight and volume. When you add up the extra fuel burned as a result, even if only a couple of percent of those grocery bags are reused as trash bags, I would expect those anti-bag laws to have an overall negative impact on the environment as a whole. The impact just isn't as visible without the plastic bags floating in the streams, because you can't see global warming. And if you include the additional trash burden from the thicker bags and extra cardboard boxes, the negative impact should be even greater.
But I digress.
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That divide is also a bunch of BS pushed by the pro-business wing of the GOP, many conservatives have no problem with environmental protection, in fact one of the stalwart conservative groups, the NRA is one of the largest funders of environmental conservation projects on the planet and helped pushed through a voluntary tax on hunting related items that goes to fund federal conservation projects. I'm fairly liberal but I'm also a card carrying NRA member because I believe in both their protection of the sec
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I don't really think there are very many opposed to conservationism. Conserving energy saves money. What they are opposed to (and this is a libertarian thing, btw) is government telling us what thou shalt do or shalt not do.
That and of course red tape. There's a thing in rural areas where if you find a squirrel with some strange spots, kill it and bury it before somebody sees it, or else suddenly you'll find that you don't own your property. These same people appreciate wildlife and all that, which is why t
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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.
Funny enough, environmental causes USED TO BE a conservative position. The EPA, for example, happened on Nixon's watch. Of course, neither Nixon nor Reagan would survive a Republican primary today. Today's US conservative movement might be more accurately called "reactionary", they're so far to the right. A US liberal would be center-right in Europe.
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:4, Interesting)
The Democrats in the United States are actually centrists by the standards of most countries. The liberals in America don't have any political power while their far-right counterparts have completely taken over the Republican Party. Look at the "socialist" health care plan passed by the Democrats. The heart of the plan is the very conservative idea of individual responsibilityâ"the individual mandate was a conservative idea until the Democrats embraced it, at which point it suddenly became a socialist plot against Americans. A true liberal would have pushed for a one-payer system.
And so it goes.
Environmental causes are not necessarily liberal (Score:2)
Environmental causes have long been seen as a very liberal thing ...
Not really. The National Park system was vastly expanded by a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt. The Environmental Protection Agency was established by a Republican, Richard Nixon. Hunting organizations, whose members tend to lean right, do far more land conservation than any other type of private organizations.
Certain environmental causes may seem liberal but that has more to do with a specific cause being politicized by liberals not because conservatives are inherently anti-environment. Regrettably both part
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
I think the milk is a bad analogy. It only affects the person consuming it, unlike low power light bulbs or leaded gasoline. If someone wants to eat something that is potentially hazardous, that's their business.
Umm.. (Score:2)
I guess we're assuming this someone has no dependents and has full medical, life, and funeral insurance?
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A lot of people miss leaded gasoline, because they miss the sweeter smell it gave off
I never heard this before, and I'm not buying it. When I started driving all gas was leaded, and it all stank. It's also all toxic, just with one fewer toxin (and fewer mentally retarded kids; that's what lead does).
The reson that folks bitched about unleaded gas the lower octane, and some older cars (particularly high powered cars) needed to be de-tuned to run unleaded or holes would burn in the pistons (the lower the octa
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Run that 92 octane leaded gas in your new car and you'll burn out your exhaust valves, because it will still be burning when the valve opens.
You will, but because of differing flame speeds, not because of the octane rating which is unrelated to flame speed. You can merrily run BP Ultimate 102 RON in a modern engine.
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> A lot of people miss leaded gasoline, because they miss the sweeter smell it gave off, vs. the harsher unleaded gasoline smell.
I have never heard of this. Some people miss it for the protection the lead gives the valves, and others miss it for the higher octane rating required for older high-compression engines.
> 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 nutritio
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There's actually a good compromise on that one, that I wish more milk producers would take up. Alton Brown has discussed it.
There's more than one way to do pasteurization. You can do it very briefly at a very high temperature, or much longer at a still-high-enough-but
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Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:4, Informative)
Last sentence of TFA:
He also has great faith in the ability of the new bulbs to last. He says he has one in his lab that has been working for about a decade.
Which of course doesn't mention the stability of the light output over time or the similarity of this one to the production model, but it's at least theoretically possible.
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Temperature sensitivity and reaction to incoming light are two things I'd be concerned with. Outside of that, these do sound a bit too good to be true...
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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Get off my carpet!
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Incandescent bulbs keep looking better and better. I was using CFL's before congress basically mandated them because they last a long time, but hate the fact that they create mini superfund sites every time you break one. The polymer described does sound like it has the potential to be toxic as hell if it burns.
New technology is great but it would be even better if congress would stop shoving this stuff down our throats.
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:5, Funny)
Well given how you've managed to reach your own conclusions based on no evidence, the reasoning for the imposition should be self-evident.
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Sounds like you've never fired a gun when you weren't holding it correctly. It's easy to do some nasty damage to your wrist or shoulder by simply having a bad grip. You can also get some fun burns if hit by a spent shell being ejected, depending on the size of the round.
Doesn't compare to what the other end of the thing can do, but still... they're pretty dangerous from every angle.
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:4, Funny)
You also can break a blood vessel while picking your nose if not done correctly.
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.38 a monster? I'd hate to see you try a 10mm.
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A lot of other bulbs, including modern incandescent, have plastic parts. So long as the plastic is high enough temperature compared to (a) the normal operating temperature with a decent fudge-factor for higher-than-normal temperature use and odd situations, and (b) if possible, tolerance for temperatures seen if there is a short... why not?
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Prototypes should always work perfectly.
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:4, Informative)
I was going to say most LEPs (light emitting plastics) last decades, but they do fade over time. One I was looking into to replace neon said to expect 60-70% brighness after 10 years (but I think 4 hours of use a day, so 12 hours or 24 hours per day would be 3-6x worse). One of the major drawbacks to the LEPs currently available is they are not very bright, so it sounds like Fipel solves that.
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Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...)
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knowledge and available alternatives (or the possibility thereof) change opinions.
As for the commercial/institutional users - they tend to shave every penny they can, regardless of the health and safety of their employees, so how's that say anything other than "it's cheap and not illegal, or enforced to the point where the illegality matters"?
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* At least for some people, the CFLs are noticeably worse than the old tubes. Don't know why, but my husband gets headaches really quickly (we're talking about 2 minutes or so) under CFLs, but only finds the big ceiling lights to be sort of annoying (unless the ceiling lights are flickering, those are terrible).
* One could avoid CFLs before, by not buying them for the home, and mostly only going out to restaurants and such that used incandescent bu
Re:I am having a vision of the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
Vision of the future... More hyped vaporware.... (Score:3, Informative)
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To me, the meaningful general comparison is what the great unwashed masses are most likely to buy at the value stores, because that's going to represent the largest installed base. And going by what you can buy in blister packs at the discount stores, original poster is demonstrably right on the money.
Arguably, better products can be purchased at higher prices, and geeks who understand the technology and have the disposable income will buy those. But -- let's be realistic for a second -- that's not what J
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Pehaps they'll miss the unnatural yellow tint CFLs give, to save on the inefficient red phospor (some of the CFLs with the best light are B on the efficiency scale, because they contain balanced amounts of yellow and red).
More seriously, traditional bulbs give off warmth, which some people understandably like, especially in colder climates. And modern halogens are C on the efficiency scale, not bad given their sun--like light. The trick is to use a special glass cover that returns some of the infra--red ba
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If they're free of flicker and buzzing, are instant-on even below 55F, don't cost >$20 each, and are dimmable, I can't see anyone complaining.
The big problem with banning incandescents is that in uninsulated basements, garages, and directly outdoors, CFLs are utterly worthless during the winter unless you plan on keeping the lights on 24/7 to maintain operating temperature - which completely defeats the purpose of high efficiency lighting.
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Oh and one more thing: if they can cover the full color spectrum for proper color rendition and come in an actual white rather than "daylight" that makes everybody look ill or fugly yellow "soft white", they will be better than both CFL and LED lamps as well as incandescent for indoor purposes as well. :-)
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I try to stick with 3500K CFLs; the 2700K are too depressing (like old incandescent lamps) and the 6000K lamps make people look sick. Plus, color rendition under the 6000K lamps is as bad as the 2700K lamps, but different. The 3500K lamps are not perfect but being closer to a true white they are the best CFL solution I've found. Unfortunately, the "true white" lamps are less common than the "soft white" and "daylight" color temps, especially when it comes to higher output bulbs.
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I for one will be happy when the old angry people born before 1980 are dead.
Get off my lawn!
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Right, because what angry old person doesn't want to see mercury buildup in our landfills?
Us angry old people have been hoarding incandescents until CFLs are replaced with something more reasonable. As it's not clear yet that LEDs are that replacement, it's good to see new emerging technologies.
Even old people set in their ways want to see CFLs go away. No mystery there.
there's something you never see (Score:2)
I knew not jumping on the CFL bandwagon was right! (Score:2)
In fact I'm still using kerosene lamps 'cause I didn't put no trust in that 'lectric light bulb. Now I can jump right past the incandescent era, the cfl era and even the led bulb and have my new house made of glowing plastic embedded with nano particles.
All kidding aside this opens up the possibilities of building this into products in new and innovative ways...
not even close to reality (Score:2)
An expensive conducting polymer loaded onto glass coated with ITO which "points the way" toward a usable device is nowhere near the vision articulated in the summary.
Future technology (Score:2)
The coolest thing is that these things are from 2013; the developer reached into the future and brought some cool tech back in time.
Too late, LEDs are here. (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [reuters.com]
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.
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LED lights are still pretty pricy, so if this technology can bring the cost of the lamps back down towards what incandescents cost, there's a use for it. Also, if it's actually "white-emitting" that will be a big improvement since CFLs ain't. Doubt it though.
Have you seen white LED street lamps? I have, and they work perfectly
I've seen a lot of partially-failed LED street lamps, which is how I know that the technology hasn't really been refined yet.
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I've seen a lot of partially-failed LED street lamps, which is how I know that the technology hasn't really been refined yet.
I've never seen a partially failed incandescent ;-)
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Display backlights? Wall-mounted panels? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Government regulation (Score:2)
You mean they actually came out with better light bulbs? I thought government regulation of light bulbs was going to destroy the industry and cause untold damage! You'd have thunk!
Lumens per watt? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Don't get excited yet... (Score:3)
http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/iridium/ [infomine.com]
Currently over $1,000 an ounce.
I am looking forward to these (Score:3)
Imagine, the sort of panel lighting you see all the time in sci fi. If they can approximate black body spectrum of an incandescent, this would be amazing. I'd line the bottoms of shelves, and install panels on the ceilings and walls, under the edges of steps, under cupboards, even inside cupboards and closets and have light exactly where I need it. It seems that if this works, you can have light panels you can actually cut to size, which would allow for really creative, ultra-modern lighting installations. I would also install panels on the back of my televisions and monitors to provide ambient backlighting to increase the apparent contrast while watching movies.
Been around for decades (Score:4, Informative)
Imagine, the sort of panel lighting you see all the time in sci fi.
It's been available since the 1960s. Electroluminescent sheets have been around for over 40 years. They're on the expensive side and light output per unit area is low, but they work fine. Some versions last for decades. (Some don't, which is a big problem for permanent installation.) They make good night lights and somewhat dim display backlights.
Here's a A3 sized white electroluminescent sheet. [e-luminates.com] About 12" x 17", costs $125.
So this is not a new thing. If the new version is a lot brighter or a lot cheaper, it might be useful. For now, it's another "nanotechnology" materials science article about an interesting lab phenomenon.
Re:Cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalist: Noun
1) Some other guy that is making money, while I sit whining in my mother's basement.
Re: Cheap (Score:2, Informative)
Capitalism is the only reason *anything* is cheap. Capitalism is when then the market (read you & I) control the price, not a central groverening authority. A monopoly is what you are thinking of. As long as there is competition in the marketplace the prices wil alway be as low as they can be.
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you and I are the market now? Narrow definition.
The market that controls the prices also includes the supply chain, and too often in capitalism, there's enough bottleneck-control (i.e. a monopoly) at some point in the supply chain, that the customer/consumer has very little to say in the price.
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Capitalism is the only reason *anything* is cheap. Capitalism is when then the market (read you & I) control the price, not a central groverening authority. A monopoly is what you are thinking of. As long as there is competition in the marketplace the prices wil alway be as low as they can be.
That explains why AT&T and Verizon are locked in a constant war of giving customers more services for less cost, right?
The problem with the "competition will fix everything" capitalist model is that it eschews reality in favor of wishful thinking.
Re: Cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, no, actually you have explained why having many competitors is a good thing. A duopoly or oligopoly is a limited form of competition where bargaining power is collected with the very few sellers. In cases like this, especially where there is a valuable resource being limited, government regulation is very much appropriate.
Capitalism, overall, is a very good thing and is responsible for our standard of living. It does not mean that it should be unchecked despite what our libertarian friends might think.
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He's actually correct. The problem is that we don't have meaningful competition in many sectors of our economy, we have industries tied up in regulatory capture (patents, copyrights, etc. overreaching, no-bid contracts, regulatory rules that benefit incumbents, etc.).
The other issue is that "true" capitalism requires complete, perfect information and zero transport costs for the consumer. I can choose from any supplier with no cost of switching, and I know the full differences between all of them. Given tha
Re:Cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm very pro-capitalism in general, I was just repeating the usual criticisms levied against it around here.
Also, your logic is faulty. There are choices besides just communism and capitalism. In fact, the examples of the soviet union are probably a better example of socialism than communism, which IMHO is a theoretical system only.
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So you don't actually believe what you wrote? Were you karma whoring or just bloviating?
No - probably just not communicating well. I was just astounded that he was claiming that capitalism would jack up the price... usually you hear people bitching about how it doesn't price in the true cost of things.
Re:Cheap (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
Heck we have a lot of things that would be excessively expensive back in the day.
A simple everyday example is food.
Most food has been reduced to near the cost of the transportation necessary to deliver it to your area. Evidence for this is the large fluctuations in food prices in lock step with fuel price fluctuations. Further evidence of this is that all food conglomerates are now also shipping conglomerates, and this is so because thats where the value creation actually happens with regards to food. The food is worth very little where it is grown and where it is processed because of the extreme efficiencies that we have achieved. It only attains value through shipping. Shipping is where the value creation happens with regards to most foods.
Yes there are "brand names" that carry a premium, but much like Apple they are essentially niche irrelevant.
More on topic, this is the historic price of light in terms of median US labor:
year - hours of work needed to purchase 1000 lumen hours of light
1800 - 5.387
1850 - 2.998
1900 - 0.2204
1950 - 0.00188
1992 - 0.00012
here is the citation for those numbers [nber.org]
Re:Cheap (Score:4, Interesting)
You're forgetting something - while your thesis that food costs are directly associated with fuel costs is correct, the reason that this is true is because fossil fuels comprise a large portion of the energy budget of food production.
From a CNN article [cnn.com]:
Doing away with food imports could be seen as understandable if international transport played a dominant role in the food chain's greenhouse gas emissions.
But in the UK 's case -- where much of the research into the "food miles" concept has taken place -- that doesn't seem to be the case. A sturdy 85 percent of UK food transport-related emissions actually derive from domestic road deliveries according to the DFID. Road freight traffic in the UK grew by 67 percent between 1980 and 2001, with the average journey length also increasing by 40 percent.
By comparison, international freight contributes 11 percent of UK food transport-related emissions -- that's less than one-tenth of one percent of the UK 's overall emissions, the DFID says.
Transportation as a whole contributes 2.5 percent of the food chain's emissions, says FCRN. Food refrigeration, on the other hand, accounts for as much as 18 percent (and notably 3.5 percent of the UK 's entire greenhouse gas emissions).
The whole transport issue initially came to the fore after the "food miles" concept was coined in Europe to illustrate how fossil fuel-intensive the global food distribution network had become.
But the relative blame that the transport sector should be taking for this is debatable.
In the U.S., up to 20 percent of the country's fossil fuel consumption goes into the food chain, according to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), which points out that fossil fuel use by the food systems in the developed world "often rivals that of automobiles".
To feed an average family of four in the developed world uses up the equivalent of 930 gallons of gasoline a year -- just shy of the 1,070 gallons that same family would use up each year to power their cars.
The average developed world diet uses 1,600 liters of fossil fuels each year, according to the U.S. based Organic Consumers Association (OCA). Only 256 of those liters come from transporting the food, says OCA.
By contrast, a whopping 496 liters goes into the chemical fertilizers used during the food growing stage, representing well over one third of the food chain's entire fossil fuel consumption.
Re: (Score:2)
Back in the old days for your monthly bills
Mortgage, Car, Power, Telephone.
Today
Mortgage, Car, Power, Telephone, Internet, Cell Phone, Cable TV, Netflix...
Interesting list, but for me:
no Mortgage, I'm renting
no telephone for decades
no Cable TV or Netflix
I'm considering (like others) to have Internet service through the cellphone only, and possibly going to 1 car for the family, leaving:
Renting, Car, Power, Internet/Cell Phone
Where are all these riches you mention?
Re: (Score:3)
Their house purchasing power has gone up: http://www.nahb.org/assets/docs/publication/fft2001_8142002101506AM.pdf [nahb.org]
Even adjusting for inflation we see that we are better off than historically. http://www.davemanuel.com/median-household-income.php [davemanuel.com] I'm just not sure what data you are using to back up your argument.
We don't have any more disposable income (adjusting for inflation) than in the past, but we have more luxeries and larger homes.
Re: (Score:2)
Interest rates went up at the same time square footage went up from '63-'82. '82 the mortgage rates peaked at almost 15%. From 1963-2000 the rates went up and we still saw buying power and house size and amenities increase. What history are you using? The rates were even lower in 1950. We just recently reached as low as they have been, but all my data is during the time in which rates soared. Get your facts straight.
Re: (Score:3)
Nowhere does it says they're unbreakable. Even the summary says "hard-to-break". It just says shatterproof, which is very different from not being able to break it at all.
Re:and (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't even mean that... shatter proof means it wont end up in a zillion razor sharp shards for you to step on. It could still be easy to break. Jello is shatter proof...
Re:The Light Bulb Conspiracy (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder what the lifespan of these bulbs is going to be ...
The Light Bulb Conspiracy [imdb.com]
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.
Re: (Score:2)
TFA says the life is good.
On the other hand, TFA also says, in comparison to CFLs:
Which sounds like BS. Sunlight (at the surface of the Earth) has a nice smooth output of light in the visible spectrum. It drops off quickly as you approach UV, but is otherwise fairly flat. It's pretty close to a black body
Re: (Score:2)
A year at full power seems fine. Wouldn't that be like 5 years of useful, typical life ie 5 hrs a night?
Re: (Score:2)
A year at full power seems fine. Wouldn't that be like 5 years of useful, typical life ie 5 hrs a night?
My 30 or so year experience with EL has been in lighted signs. Basically you cut out a stencil and place it in front of an EL panel, and it looks cool, kinda like blacklit, sorta. Also there was a fad maybe 10 years ago with EL nightlights. No, a year of life is not cool for those apps and makes people pretty unhappy until they switch back.
Even 5 years is pretty sad compared to all but photoflood bulbs.
Re: (Score:2)
Ballmer in his inimitable way said DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS and it applies to Fipel, too.
The concept guy, Dr. Carroll at Wake Forest Univ., who put together the physics and shows a prototype is possible, will now be superceeded by designers and developers of products who will have to show a valid cost - benefit analysis and overall usability.
This is the type of university and private development that makes the world move forward. It is a perfect example of why the government should not predict an
Re: (Score:2)
D'oh, I really should read the post more carefully - I somehow missed the link to that article which was already present.
My apologies for the useless post (and this useless reply - which wouldn't be necessary if /. allowed me to delete my own comment.)
Re: (Score:2)
Great, how what the hell am I supposed to break and jam into people's eye sockets during a fight? A beer bottle? Lame.
Broken glass from shattered fishtanks.
Re: (Score:2)
Cheap? I'm old enough to remember the electric company giving out free lightbulbe(sic) in exchange for your burnt-out ones. It encouraged electricity use.
I guess it all comes full circle. My electric company gives out new CFLs to its customers.