Light Bulb Replacements 976
LoveOO writes Boston.com has a story about three companies which are trying to replace the Light bulb. I say it's about time and what about hydrogen powered vehicles? Two things that annoy me are filling the gas tank and changing light bulbs. It's time we did alot less of both."
Mousetrap (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Mousetrap (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mousetrap (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mousetrap (Score:5, Funny)
Vaccuum cleaners make good fly swatters too.
Yes my parents had a party the day i was old enough to move out.
'Cause.. (Score:4, Funny)
Filling the gas tank is so much worse than filling the hydrogen tank?
Je ne comprende pas.
Re:'Cause.. (Score:3, Offtopic)
In principle, you could drive your hydrogen-powered car home at night, filling the exhaust tank with water. You could then plug your car in to an electrical outlet, and the water would be electrolyzed to hydrogen and oxygen overnight, filling your fuel tank. Depending on how fast the electrolysis occurred, it probably wouldn't eliminate the need for filling the tank, but fillups could be less frequent under city driving.
Re:'Cause.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not interested...
Well, they've got the mechanics down... (Score:4, Informative)
So all they have to work on next is making it look overtly huge (when it doesn't need to be).
Re:'Cause.. (Score:5, Informative)
An article on it beating the other cards is here. [evworld.com]
connectors (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:'Cause.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:'Cause.. (Score:3, Funny)
Just eat at Chi-Chi's [chi-chis.com] a lot. Problem solved.
Re:'Cause.. (Score:4, Insightful)
So. Yeah. Producing (and therefore consuming) hydrogen adds to the net level of CO.
Re:'Cause.. (Score:5, Informative)
You don't "burn" the hydrogen in a hydrogen powered car, and you don't "burn" the natural gas to produce hydrogen. Natural gas is composed of hydrocarbons (natural gas consists of only hydrogen and carbon atoms; granted it is probably not pure, so there might be trace elements in there). The natural gas is put through a chemical process to extract the hydrogen. This chemical process need not produce CO. (In fact burning hydrocarbons only produces CO when incomplete combustion takes place--the chemical reaction doesn't complete properly in an internal combustion engine. Any factory that produces hydrogen doesn't need to produce CO, if it does, it can capture that CO and combine it with O to produce CO2 which is much safer on the enviroment)
Re:'Cause.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people assume that hydrogen is disproportionately dangerous because of the Hindenburg disaster. The fact is that if gasoline powered engines were invented today, gasoline is volatile enough that they would be considered too unsafe to be approved.
Re:'Cause.. (Score:5, Informative)
Hindenburg "disaster" (Score:4, Informative)
Thats a good reason not to adopt fuel cells.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:'Cause.. (Score:5, Informative)
> highly flammable.
It's not the flammability that's the hazard associated with pressurized gas cylinders (like hydrogen). It's the pressure. Heck, a *helium* cylinder can kill you if mishandled.
Re:'Cause.. (Score:5, Informative)
that probably wouldn't happen. Contrary to popular belief, Hydrogen isn't very dangerous. Although it is extremely flammable, A hydrogen fire will be extremely short lived and burn straight up as the hydrogen rises rapidly, as opposed to a gasolene fire, which will burn for a comparativly long time and flows over the ground.
additionally, most hydrogen fuel cell designs involve storing the hydrogen in some stable form, such as chemically bound to a metal compound. When a small electric current is run across the metal, the hydrogen is released in small amounts. Its not like the back of your SUV would have a huge compressed hydrogen tank in it.
Im sure the subject of the hidenburg (sp?) will occur in this thread, so i should probably mention that recent studies on that explosion point to the cause of the huge red fire being not the hydrogen itself, but the skin of the airship which was coated with an extremely flammable material chemically similar to solid rocket fuel. Witnesses at the scene reported seeing a large red flame erupt from the airship. Hydrogen burns with an almost invisible blue flame, and would have exploded above the airship as the hydrogen escaped. It is likely that the fire was started when an electrical discharge ignited the skin of the airship, and that the hydrogen had little to do with the outcome, i.e, a similar result would have occured if helium was used instead.
Re:'Cause.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:'Cause.. (Score:5, Informative)
Hydrogen cannot explode in a "mushroom cloud", since that is typical of H-bombs, that require an A-bomb as a detonator. Now, if the other car had an A-bomb onboard, this might have a far-fetched possibility to happen.
However H2 is pretty safe. It is ultralight, which means that, if it has a clean path to the sky, it will not accumulate as gasoline fumes; that's why nobody on the Hindenburg died because of hydrogen (Yeah, nobody). Some were killed by the explosion in the diesel engines, others were so scared by the flames above them that they jumped out of the gondola - crashing in the ground 100 meters below, but all those who remained in the gondola survived the crash landing. That's because the hydrogen flames went straight upwards, while in a gasoline fire you have liquid gasoline running all over the place.
The real safety issue with H2 is that it fires very easily. You need a spark to ignite a mixture of air and methane, while static electricity is enough for hydrogen and air. Normal atmosphere in a windy day is normally enough. That's sometimes actually a Good Thing, because hydrogen is lit way before it can accumulate in large quantities.
Brilliant Idea! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Brilliant Idea! (Score:4, Funny)
what happened to people who had amazing ideas BEFORE lightbulbs were invented?
Re:Brilliant Idea! (Score:5, Funny)
And the fire lighting was the first bright idea.
Re:Brilliant Idea! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Brilliant Idea! (Score:5, Funny)
Guys, this is history..! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guys, this is history..! (Score:5, Informative)
I'm migrating from incandescent lights to small fluorescent light bulbs that screw into the same fixtures.
A 3.5W bulb will light a closet.
A 5W bulb will light a small room.
A 15W bulb will light a living room.
A 25W bulb will light a kitchen.
Compare to 4-7W for a typical nightlight, 15W to light a typical closet 40W to light a small room, 60-75W to light a larger room, 75-100W to light one's kitchen, and that's about 20-80% power savings over incandescent lights. I've been doing this for almost 10 years now.
-uso.
Re:Brilliant Idea! (Score:5, Funny)
Solution. (Score:5, Funny)
Do them both at the same time, sooner or later you won't have to do either ever again.
Must be that new math.... (Score:3, Funny)
"and they require much less electricity -- up to 80 percent less"
"You could replace a 100-watt light bulb with a 60-watt LED, and get the same brightness,"
"You'd save 40 percent on power"
So it is 80 percent or 40 percent?
=)
Re:Must be that new math.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Must be that new math.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The 40% assumption is based off a total power bill which includes things such as airconditioning , appliances, computers, and lightbulbs. Lights, however are a relativly small portion of the bill (in an average house) so that is why the number is 40% instead of 80%, they actually used real math instead of fuzzy math or Riaa math (almost the same thing except fuzzy math makes small number bigger where as riaa math just has a pro
Re:Must be that new math.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Energy is the product of power and time. If you use 40% less power for the same amount of time, it will cost the electric company 40% less to produce it, and you'll get a 40% smaller bill.
There is no way the two bulbs would have the same resistance - they would then consume the same power. The current pulled by the bulb is just V/R - if you don't change V and you don't change R...
I^2R is a cute formula, but I've seen it misused more often t
Re:Must be that new math.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Just throwing out ideas here... Couldn't you arrange a few LEDs in a hemisphere and put a glass sphere/bulb over it that is translucent (ie, looks like finely-sanded glass) to diffuse (?scatter?) the light to make the photons go in a more varied pattern (or lack thereof)? I guess there would still be spots of brighter light where the LEDs are positioned, but if you put a few layers of it, it might work (not to mention cost 10x as much).
Doesn't take much time... (Score:5, Insightful)
OK. So how much time are you spending changing light bulbs per year? And was the total time spent submitting this news story longer?
To be honest I don't think that changing light bulbs is a major household time sink. (Different story of course for people who deal with traffic lights, and hence the move to LEDs). I must spend minutes per year changing light bulbs, I waste far more time replying to
John.
Re:Doesn't take much time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not much. But if regular bulbs everywhere would be replaced by less energy-consuming alternatives... there's a point to it, especially when you concider the recent news.
It depends on how hard it is to change the bulb (Score:4, Informative)
The railroad industry is already replacing crossing light bulbs with arrays of LEDs. The typical application divides the round shape into 4 'pizza slice' quarters that are separate panels. The redundancy is such that even if one of them goes out completely, the other 3 are still working. Also, if one of the panels experiences substantial individual LED failures, it can be swapped out, leaving the others in place. As the article alludes, local governments are beginning to apply the same reasoning to traffic lights as well. In an application where the cost of the bulb pales in comparison to the labor to replace it, and the legal exposure should it fail, this one's a no-brainer.
Re:Doesn't take much time... (Score:5, Interesting)
It also decreases lightbulb sales. It's just like many other things (consumer electronics, computer parts, shoes, clothes, etc.) that are basically designed to break after a certain amount of time.
Before this mentality took over in the 1950's, things were made to last forever and had a really sturdy, well-crafted feel to them. A lot of stuff from this period still works perfectly today.
Not exactly.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Color.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Color.... (Score:3, Informative)
True. However, at least one of the major lightbulb companies based here in the US has an aggressive program to bring LEDs to the masses. Right now, they are pushing R&D on advanced LED designs in cooperation with LED manufacturers and working on getting the color right. They anticipate that widespread home use is within this decade. They are nearly ready with replacements for commercial use.
Others hav
Re:Color.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Last I looked into white LEDs there was still a color problem. The light comes out just a bit too blue. At the time, it was impossible to get a truer white in a single 'bulb'.
I bought an LED desk lamp that has an array of about 100 LEDs. To get around the bluish color problem, about a third of the LEDs are orange to make the light warmer colored. Unfortunately it is still not quite like incandescents or flourescents. The light from the lamp still makes skin tones look sickly bluish gray. It's very bright for only using 5 Watts. I believe that flourescent lights are still more efficient, but there is a certain coolness factor of having an LED lamp.
If anyone is interested, here is a link to the PDF of the GALAXe LED desk lamp [tcpi.com]
Re:Color.... (Score:5, Informative)
The only way of getting a wide spectrum of light is to have an object glow with heat, where the energy released per photon varies chaotically, rather than using a process that outputs individual photons which will only produce light at the wavelengths that correspond to energy gaps. Glowing with heat is lower efficiency than emitting individual photons.
I suspect that LEDs will become more popular in step with paint formulas that look good (and look right) under LED light, and also with people coming to expect LED light more.
Heard of Flourescence? (Score:4, Insightful)
Jeff
Re:Heard of Flourescence? (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, the modern bulbs are really good about lighting up right away, not flickering, and not dying prematurely--hopefully (unlike some of the early screw type flourescents).
One word of advice from me to Slashdot: Don't buy the "Lights of America" brand, they're nothing but trouble.
Re:Heard of Flourescence? (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed. I bought 10 of them, and 5 were dead within 2 months. Most of the others are seeing serious discoloration around the base of the bulb. These are in open air, so I don't think the fixture is causing overheating. Stick with the better brands.
Re:Heard of Flourescence? (Score:4, Informative)
I've got 2 houses using these bulbs exclusively (except the oven and fridge), saving about $10/month (September to March) in electricity. I've got bulbs 5 years old still running strong.
I love 'em.
Re:Heard of Flourescence? (Score:5, Informative)
In the last few years, several of my gripes about flourescents are no more:
- Upfront Cost: They now cost very little, they have come down from $20 per bulb to $2 per bulb. You no longer have to make an "investment" to go flourescent.
- Size: They used to be bigger, They now fit everywhere a regular bulb fits.
- Speed of Light: Old flourescents often tooks several seconds to turn on and up to 15 minutes to get to full brightness. Newer ones come on almost instantaneously (300ms maybe) and are plenty bright right away. While they aren't on par yet, its good enough for me.
There is still one area in which I don't use flourescents. Dimmable lights. That means they don't go in my living and dining rooms where I want to dim the lights for TV or a nice dinner. It makes it hard to use them with X10 as well, since all X10 is dimmable. There are some that are dimmable, but they tend to be more expensive and I haven't tried them.Re:Heard of Flourescence? (Score:3, Interesting)
If LEDs don't have this problem, then they would be a better solution for me.
Re:Heard of Flourescence? (Score:3, Informative)
Patent abusing scum (Score:4, Informative)
Well, I'm damn sure Color Kinetics isn't getting any of my money. From the article:
The company holds 19 patents related to the control of LED lighting systems, and has filed for more than 100 additional patents. "We spend about a million dollars a year filing patents," says chief executive George Mueller. The company has two full-time patent lawyers in-house, and also works with the Boston firm of Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks.
And:
It'll be interesting to see whether Color Kinetics can exact a licensing fee from anyone who blends colored LEDs. Says Simms: "We haven't invested the fortune that we have in intellectual property without planning to defend it."
I'm not going to rant about this, because you've all heard it before. So I'll just sit here and fume silently...
Re:Patent abusing scum (Score:4, Interesting)
No, they can't. The big outdoor big-screen TV's at the race track in Saratoga NY use this. One Red, one Green, and one Blue LED for each pixel. Been done, prior art, now go crawl back into the hole from which you came, you dirty low-life patent weasel
Re:Patent abusing scum (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Patent abusing scum (Score:4, Insightful)
No -- they're investing major resources in lawyers. Read the article... you do not need 100 patents on controlling LEDs, nor do you need two full-time patent lawyers in a 75-employee company.
I would be surprised if more than one or two of those patents is nonobvious; certainly the major one mentioned in the article (blending LED colors to make -- gasp -- many different colors) is obvious. Even the author of the article complained about it.
Re:Patent abusing scum (Score:5, Interesting)
How is controlling an LED lighting system any different than controlling a regular lighting system? The answer is that it is not. This company is a patent scammer. I think they are using a tried an true formula:
1) hear about new technology
2) figure out what existing methods are analogous in new technology (real complicated stuff like oh they emit light too so how about we invent special "LED switches")
3) Patent said "novel" invention.
4) Threaten to sue all the real companies that actually want to make stuff and sell it.
5) profit.
Hyrdogen... (Score:5, Informative)
Cleaner Production (Score:5, Interesting)
Not saying its 100% clean, but its a net gain of 'clean', when you take into account the filth cars spew out using carbon based fuels directly..
And no, I'm not a tree hugger.. I LOVE my car.. but I also realize what it spits out the back end due to its fuel..
Re:Hyrdogen... (Score:3, Informative)
No, it's relative.
Theoretically, energy produced at a central plant and then shipped elsewhere via hydrogen results in more effecieint use of power than millions of seperate, individual power plants.
Last I heard, this is espeically true for gasoline vs. "big oil fired hydrogen plant." Plus, you can clean and maintain the "big oil fired hydrogen plant" a lot easier than the engines of a million cars.
As for the other power sources you listed: solar eventually pays
Electricity more than bulb cost (Score:3, Informative)
((((12 x 365) x 100) / 1,000) x $0.07) = $30.66
this is under the 5000 hours of long life bulbs which cost less than $3.
Who cares how much the bulb costs ?
Use Compact Flourescents for Lighting! (Score:5, Informative)
LEDs have their places where you need something bright and compact that can be turned on and off quickly. I like the new LED flashlights, brake lights, and street lights. But use flourescents for lighting, please, and use them today.
Terrible color and they often don't fit. (Score:4, Interesting)
I've tried over and over to use flourescents, but:
Re:Terrible color and they often don't fit. (Score:3, Informative)
But #2, yes, that it a problem. Though as X10 has utterly fail
Also... (Score:5, Informative)
(this is just the ones that are improperly disposed of and break)
Re:Terrible color and they often don't fit. (Score:5, Informative)
1. They often don't fit in a light fixture.
I recently bought some GE compact flourescent bulbs for our kitchen, which were $8 for two "60W" bulbs. They are *exactly* the same size as the incadescents they are replacing, including the base, which is only ~1" in diameter, only draw 15W, and are ~15% brighter than a 60W incandescent.
3. They make everyone look slightly green.
I have no idea what you are talking about here. Our compact flourescent lights have a much more pleasing spectrum than the yellow incandescents, and are very close to the full-spectrum lights we use around the house.
I don't use X10, and so can't answer to that, but please don't post outdated nonsense.
Re:Nonsense? (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite true. Flourescent bulbs come in a variety of different color temperatures. Incandescent bulbs are typically around 2800 K. You can get flourescent bulbs at around 3000K, at 4100 K, and at 5000K (close to daylight, which is 5500K). There are also many specialty bulbs (such as Ott-Lite [ott-lite.com]) that give "true color" from flourescent bulbs. It is practically impossible to get true color from incandescent bulbs.
Sunbeam (Score:5, Informative)
Keep shopping.
I, too, hated the funky color flourescent lights produced. Then, about a year ago, I discovered that Sunbeam sold screw-in flourescent lights that emit light indistinguishable from incandescents (to my pretty picky eyes).
I originally bought them from Target but stopped by a few days ago for the first time in a long time and learned that the don't sell them anymore. Oh, the wonders of the American marketing machine.
Not all flourscent lights are the same. Find the Sunbeams.
--Richard
The thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Additionally, you can't go wrong with nuclear power if you're looking at least polluting power sources. Many people look at solar as if its some sort of panacea, but the amount of energy that goes into making a tile is far more than you'll ever get out of it -- turns out that at the end of the day the thing everybody's been complaining about is the best option because all the pollution is contained.
Re:The thing is... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The thing is... (Score:5, Informative)
I recently did some calculations to see if save any money. Quebec already has one of the lowest electricity costs in North America at 5.97 cents per kWhr (above 30kWh per day). People in other places save even more!
Compact Fluorescent (10000 hr, 23 W)
===================
Initial bulb $10 + Electricity $13.73 = $23.73
Incandescent Light Bulb (1000hr, 100W)
=======================
10 bulbs $5 + Electricity $59.70 = $64.70
Plus, you save on the environmental cost of the packaging. I have also read that although CFL contain mercury, more mercury is released due to coal burning than for the equivalent 10 incandescent light bulbs.
http://www.nema.org/lamprecycle/epafactsheet-cf
The problem is cost (Score:5, Insightful)
What they should do if they want people to adopt these new bulbs is make it so all lightbulb packages have to display the average cost of the lightbulb over its lifetime. People may see that the LED or flourescent lights sitting on the shelf right now cost a lot more and don't buy them, but I bet they will when they see on the box that the bulb over it's lifetime costs a fraction as much in electricity used.
Re:The problem is cost (Score:4, Informative)
Now, to manufacture LEDs in bulk requires chipmaking equipment, but you're making thousands of LEDs per wafer, so there's an economy of scale there. And the yields tend to improve significantly as the process matures. Also, I'm reasonably sure that making LEDs is considerably more straight forward than microprocessors, if for no other reason than the mask is simpler and you're only making a single component (a huge diode array) on the wafer.
Electrical issues (Score:5, Interesting)
Does anyone know of a whole-house solution for providing clean, voltage-regulated power to an entire house? I probably have $50K+ of computers, music equipment, home theatre, etc, and all of it would be better off with clean power.
We have whole-house solutions for water filtering, air filtering, so where's my whole-house solution for clean power (and maybe even whole-house UPS?)
Re:Electrical issues (Score:5, Interesting)
We already have a good lightbulb replacement... (Score:4, Insightful)
They've got a whole spectrum of colored tubes using the same technology as they use to make neon signs, if you so desire.
The only thing that you get with LEDs is the ability to get small amounts of light from very small amounts of power.
They are great for microlights and flashlights and medium-sized jumbotrons and a few special purpose applications where normal lights just won't work. The LED manufacturers are getting sick of just making indicator lights, so they are trying to push their new toys as much as they can.
Hydrogen - The future of Buzzword Energy (Score:3, Interesting)
The fact is that you need energy to produce hydrogen, and that energy is probably going to come from either Coal, or Natural Gas. The end user thinks their helping the environment, but what really happens is that the production of a carbon exhaust is moved back in the supply chain. The amount of Hydrogen produced by a renewable source in any reasonably short time frame (20 years) is going to be almost negligible.
The Hydrogen Future seems too good to be true, because it is.
--Mike--
Re:Hydrogen - The future of Buzzword Energy (Score:4, Insightful)
Will these be permanent? (Score:3, Interesting)
I also wonder if any company who invents these lightbulbs will not build in some sort of artificially short lifespan so as to have an increased revenue as people have to continually buy more.
LED traffic signals (Score:5, Interesting)
I must say that Color Kinetics gear rocks. Their color-mixing LED arrays not only look cool, but are a neat toy to program for fancy light shows.
Also on the LED front, the city where I currently reside (champaign, IL) recently passed funding and a proposal to replace all of the old incandescent traffic signals with LED arrays. Should cost a lot of money originally, but will save big on electricity bills in the long run. Here is an interesing EPA EnergyStar paper [grrn.org] talking about the potential energy savings that cities can get from this technology -- 1 Million kWh and nearly $70,000 per year per 100 intersections! Also, LED based traffic signals are (IMHO) easier to see both at night and during the day.
One complaint from a study [uiuc.edu] is that the green traffic lights are actually too bright.
worlds oldest currently operating college webcam [mitwebcam.com]How many Slashdotters does it take... (Score:5, Funny)
1 to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been changed 14 to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how the light bulb could have been changed differently 7 to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs 27 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing light bulbs 53 to flame the spell checkers 41 to correct spelling/grammar flames 6 to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb"
Re:How many Slashdotters does it take... (Score:5, Funny)
Bulb life (Score:4, Informative)
Hydrogen is a joke. It takes energy to break apart water. Besides, the highest energy density available is in hydrocarbon chains (i.e. gasoline).
Why were you wasting power (Score:3, Interesting)
by running an exterior light all night in the first place?
Light polluting scum. [discover.com]
Change the light bulb socket too (Score:4, Insightful)
Obligatory Geek Remark (Score:3, Funny)
No lightbulb jokes (Score:3, Informative)
A whole avenue of humourous pleasure will be closed
Lightbulb replacements discouraged (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure GE had something to do with the product never seeing the "light of day" (um...yeah).
Inova Microlight (Score:4, Informative)
I recenly bought a bunch of Inova Microlights [botachtactical.com] to pass out at work as a going away gift and the amout of light they product for their size in amazing.
I've been really itching to get ahold of a next generation Luxeon Star [luxeonstar.com] LED light. The CMG Sonic and Infinity [cmgequipment.com] look prety sturdy.
More information and comparisons on LEDs and LED flashlights han be found here [att.net].
Don't LEDs last forever? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does the article say "lasts up to 10 times longer"? Are they figuring on the probability of losing them to surges or accidents? Or is there something I don't know about LEDs?
Re:Don't LEDs last forever? (Score:5, Informative)
LEDs will fade slowly with time, thought it's a very slow process for diodes operated at low levels.
LEDs contain an interface between two semiconductor layers; it is around this interface that light is generated. Electrons crossing this interface can occasionally kick atoms back and forth over this boundary. Eventually, enough cross-contamination will occur to dim and then extinguish the LED. This does take a long time. Note also that this process is accelerated at high temperatures.
Use 130V bulbs (Score:4, Informative)
Using a bulb rated at a higher voltage (at least 5V) than your electrical system (mine seems to provide 119V at a typical light socket on a circuit running around 6A) will extend the life of your bulbs by an order of magnitude, not just by a few weeks/months: the tradeoff is that light output is decreased, in my case by about 10%. No problem, just use a higher wattage bulb or more of them.
Bike Lights (Score:4, Informative)
The Real Deal (Score:5, Informative)
Florescents are your best bet stop gap and I hear that Ikea sells them for the best price available anywhere and they are consistently coming down in price everywhere.
LED's are the Grail. They are extremely minimalist in raw resources( a transistor and a plastic shell that will outlast 5 or 6 FLORESCENTS), they beat even florescents in energy consuption by a factor of 4 or more, solid state so droppage or shock damage are not a factor. Color is easy to fix and as for price... Who here paid 10 large(this means $10,000USD in case your not in the know) for a laptop in 1993? Ok now how many shelled out $700 this year? LED's are Diodes just like the ones the computer industry has been perfecting for decades. The price will fall. Alot.
Sidenote: All transistors and diodes produces photons as a byproduct Your computer is (depending on its transistor density, since the wavelength of the photons are dependent on the size of the transistor) currently pumping out microwave and radio energy. Since they are not optomized for this effect as LED's are they amount is reletively small and most is absorbed into the chips structure and converted to heat.
MIT Technology Review article (Score:4, Interesting)
MIT Technology Review [technologyreview.com] did a nice article on the development of LED replacements for light bulbs in the May 2003 issue. However, you need to be a paid subscriber to read this online.
The article focuses on the often secretive research going on at competing companies to develop a cost-effective white LED, which is needed to replace general illumination. Most white LEDs today are actually UV emitters with a white phosphor, reducing the efficiency. The other standard approach is to have red, green and blue LEDs together with a diffuser.
The ultimate slashdot lightbulb joke (Score:4, Funny)
Q: How many companies does it take to replace the light bulb?
A: Three.
1. One firm to dream up a replacement technology and patent it without actually specifying how it is to be achieved.
2. One firm to actually develop a replacement technology and bring it to market.
3. And a firm of lawyers to sue the second firm on behalf of the first firm.
4. ???
5. Profit!
In SOVIET RUSSIA, Beowulf cluster of lighbulbs invents YOU!
this reminded me of a txt i saw on a bbs once (Score:5, Funny)
For years, it has been believed that electric bulbs emit light,
but recent information has proved otherwise. Electric bulbs don't
emit light; they suck dark. Thus, we call these bulbs Dark Suckers.
The Dark Sucker Theory and the existence of dark suckers prove
that dark has mass and is heavier than light.
First, the basis of the Dark Sucker Theory is that electric bulbs
suck dark. For example, take the Dark Sucker in the room you are in.
There is much less dark right next to it than there is elsewhere. The
larger the Dark Sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark.
Dark Suckers in the parking lot have a much greater capacity to suck
dark than the ones in this room.
So with all things, Dark Suckers don't last forever. Once they are
full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the dark spot
on a full Dark Sucker.
A candle is a primitive Dark Sucker. A new candle has a white wick.
You can see that after the first use, the wick turns black, representing
all the dark that has been sucked into it. If you put a pencil next to
the wick of an operating candle, it will turn black. This is because
it got in the way of the dark flowing into the candle. One of the
disadvantages of these primitive Dark Suckers is their limited range.
There are also portable Dark Suckers. In these, the bulbs can't
handle all the dark by themselves and must be aided by a Dark Storage
Unit. When the Dark Storage Unit is full, it must be either emptied
or replaced before the portable Dark Sucker can operate again.
Dark has mass. When dark goes into a Dark Sucker, friction from
the mass generates heat. Thus, it is not wise to touch an operating
Dark Sucker. Candles present a special problem as the mass must travel
into a solid wick instead of through clear glass. This generates a
great amount of heat and therefore it's not wise to touch an operating
candle.
Also, dark is heavier than light. If you were to swim just below
the surface of the lake, you would see a lot of light. If you were to
slowly swim deeper and deeper, you would notice it getting darker and
darker. When you get really deep, you would be in total darkness. This
is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the
lighter light floats at the top. The is why it is called light.
Finally, we must prove that dark is faster than light. If you were
to stand in a lit room in front of a closed, dark closet, and slowly
opened the closet door, you would see the light slowly enter the closet.
But since dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the dark leave
the closet.
Next time you see an electric bulb, remember that it is a Dark Sucker.
LED vs. Compact Fluorescent (Score:4, Informative)
Better yet, you could replace a 100 watt light bulb with a 27 watt CF and get the same brightness. For about $5 at your local Target megastore. And it will last for at least five years based on my experience.
I went through my mother's house and replaced several kilowatts worth of standard bulbs with CF's (not all the bulbs in the house, but about 25% of them) and her electricity bill has gone down on average by about $50 per month (keep in mind here in Philadelphia the electricity rate is very high).
Re:A lot (Score:3, Informative)
I apologize to the person who was deeply offended and scandalized by my belief. Plez forgiv me.
Re:Hydrogen Power (Score:5, Interesting)