Accidental Invention Points to End of Light Bulbs

cool!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20051021/sc_space/accidentalinventionpointstoendoflightbulbs

The main light source of the future will almost surely not be a bulb. It might be a table, a wall, or even a fork.

An accidental discovery announced this week has taken LED lighting to a new level, suggesting it could soon offer a cheaper, longer-lasting alternative to the traditional light bulb. The miniature breakthrough adds to a growing trend that is likely to eventually make Thomas Edison's bright invention obsolete

(...)

Quantum dots contain anywhere from 100 to 1,000 electrons. They're easily excited bundles of energy, and the smaller they are, the more excited they get. Each dot in Bower's particular batch was exceptionally small, containing only 33 or 34 pairs of atoms.


When you shine a light on quantum dots or apply electricity to them, they react by producing their own light, normally a bright, vibrant color. But when Bowers shined a laser on his batch of dots, something unexpected happened.

(...)

Imagine if these dots are mixed into clear paint and placed on a ceiling? If they can be exited with an ultraviolet (invisible) laser in the corner?

Or paint all the walls. One could simulate the sun moving across the sky.

However, the energy savings alone make it worthwhile.

I foresee walkers and joggers who exercise after darkness, and their dogs, being able to wear something very lightweight which will be more visible than merely a reflective strip.

I sure hope GE doesn't get the patent to this.

Interesting how this development has come about relatively recently after the release of "What The Bleep Do We Know." Heh. The quantums strike again. :D

just might check it out!

:hi:

Kind of a stinky story-line, in a way, but it works to explain the premise of the movie. (The segment on the water crystals was astonishing.)

I've always been a big fan of quantum physics. It's good to see the knowledge coming out more, especially because I believe humanity needs it now more than ever.

Check out http://www.whatthebleep.com for more info. A very interesting site, indeed.

Back atcha :hi:

This is an example of real science at work. While discovered by accident (as many things are), it is consistent with theory and reproducible. There is no mysticism here.

"What the Bleep do we know?" packages a lot of beliefs that are entertaining, but not scientific. To cite one example: Emoto's work with water crystals being affected by words written on paper, thoughts, emotions or prayers has never been peer reviewed, is not based on accepted scientific theory, nor has it been reproduced to my knowledge. They sure are pretty pictures, though.

I don't think the people associated with that movie use phrases like "quantum physics" with the same understanding as the guy in this article. I find discoveries like this quantum dot light source to be extremely enlightening. _{(no pun intended)} I wish more people would find science to be a "turn-on." _{(okay, that one was intentional)} It worries me when people invoke supernatural forces to "explain" something they don't understand (or that no-one understands... yet).

:hi:

eom

"The new device gives off a warm, yellowish-white light that shines twice as bright and lasts 50 times longer than the standard 60 watt light bulb."

If this uses a similar or lower amount of energy as the current lightbulbs, and is relatively easy to produce, and there is no sort of health risk that reaches out and catches us by surprise, there's no reason this couldn't be the bulb's replacement. Those, however, are big questions.

I'm much more excited about the idea of it not needing a bulb at all. I could see this opening up all sorts of design possibilities. Maybe there could be some sort of clear glass ceiling, using this to light up the room; maybe you could even do the same with a wall, or a floor. It will be interesting to see what people come up with if this comes into popular usage.

-pun intended- could be glass coated with a mixture including these quantum dots. During the day, the glass could be clear; at night, the glass would provide light.

Lots and lots of consumer applications are possible with this discovery.

Perhaps there is some way to create a solar panel that takes sunlight and uses it to create the laser the new light needs.

This could be a good way to keep costs down, and creates all sorts of awesome design ideas like the one you mentioned.

If this isn't toxic and people can swallow it or have an application to coat for example their intestinal tract, imagine the benefit to physicians when doing some sort of laparoscopic procedure. I'm not explaining this very well, but I think you get the picture ... no pun intended :)

I could paint my cat and find him at night!

:rofl:

light bulb maufacturers? No more electrical cords running from lamps to wall outlets?

Light bulb manufacturers would eventually be put out of business, but we'd still need lamps for the same reasons. LEDs take DC, so there would have to be an AC/DC converter in the lamps, which is a simple circuit.

the cockroach to intropduce legislation banning them? Profits before people!

and they'd charge a fortune for it.

remember we have a long way to go before these things can be commercially viable. it's ain't so easy to line up 34 atoms just right....

And gives me hope for the future.

Nanotech may very well save our species, and untold others, from extinction.

I can't wait, changing the lights in my house is a pain in the ass.

"How many ... does it take to change a light bulb" jokes

"How many robots does it take to precisely align thirty-four quantum dots?"

:silly:

very kewl

last 100,000 hours. We can set a color or have them change along the spectrum. What is amazing for my kid's friends is how our front door (bright chartreuse) will change to white, deep orange, red, light blue. (My husband designs childrens hospitals and we paid wholesale~$5,000 at the time)

I have often wondered if in the future, if our walls will be all white and lighting will change the colors to fit a mood.

$5000 also seems a lot to light one room, even if it lasts 50 years.

when technology was in early stages. Also, we have 2- 20 foot panels down opposite walls. We did it more as an artistic statement than for cost efficiency.

Now we need quantum computers...

and keep it off the market.

Would like to buy more of them. Also have the crank radio.

informed by science. Would someone please tell the 'morans.

it was discovered by accident. :evilgrin:

Amazing things can happen by accident in this world. The evolution of the moran being one of them. ;-)

scientific developments. I do agree with you about the evolution of the moran.

The dots need electricity, or other light, to produce light. So something still has to be powered by electricity. How are they proposing to make tables, walls or forks glow? The forks, especially, would have to be battery-driven - very inefficient. It seems to me that a bulb is still a very convenient place to place these quantum dots; one the whole, we prefer our illumination from above us than below. Perhaps future design would include panels on a wall or ceiling wired to use them.

The article says the LED/quantum dot lights are twice as bright as "the standard 60 watt light bulb"; isn't that less efficient than a fluorescent blub (mine say they use one fifth of the energy of an incandescent bulb)? Why are these an advance on fluorescent bulbs?

I've replaced all my incandescents with flours and they are incredibly efficient.

Incandescent bulbs are so wasteful due to their design. All the heat that is generated makes them that way.

Also, did you know that mercury vapor lights (the older ones used in parking lots) still use the same amount of electricity even as they start to dim? Talk about diminishing returns!

...when they pry my cold, dead fingers off the switch.

Incandescent get real hot. The energy for the heat comes from electricity. Fluorescents also get warm but much less than incandescent. LED generate almost no heat, so the light is very efficient. (I think. There are a lot of people around here who know way more than I about electrical engineering.)

seems to say LEDs are just about now approaching the efficiency of fluorescent lights.

substitution where the main drivers that made them better than Florescent.

My florescent bulbs do not fit where all my regular bulbs do - and the cost of a simple coating has to ne closs to nil after cost savings from getting rid of rather complicated internals of the regular bulb.

http://exploration.vanderbilt.edu/news/news_quantumdot_led.htm

The idea is that the quantum dots amplify the light from the LED/laser diode. The problem until recently has been that the emitted light was of a color that humans don't like so much. The particular quantum dot formulation discovered by Michael Bowers emits white light with a yellow cast -- something much more akin to regular incandescents.

It'll be interesting to see what happens with the idea of driving the quantum dots directly by electricity. As you say, with LEDs they seem to make the light a more acceptable colour, rather than improve the efficiency. But if LEDs continue to improve in efficiency, that will be important.

And the big advantage to these dots, as I see it, is that they can use colored LED's and lasers (which are extremely efficient) and turn them into normal white light.

Right now, there are white LED's which are expensive and are not really a natural light like sunshine. And I'm not sure if there are white lasers yet.

This may be a cheap solution to make efficiency affordable.

As I said in post #37, Wikipedia says they are just about now becoming as efficient as fluorescent lights. Now, Wikipedia can be wrong, but the Sandia National Laboratory seems to agree:

for an operating room or show lighting, not to have the heat.

Wouldn't it?.(true question, I don't know about other things)

I love this idea

this inventor out of his well-deserved profits?

Seriously, this is awesome.

You see, it happened like this: A spacecraft carrying humans from the future was forced to return to the earth of their past to change something which is happening now that will affect the future in a bad way - for example, an attack by an extragalactic species. But there would be a problem: the spacecraft would be unable to return to the future once their mission is over unless they make some major repairs. Even more troubling, most of the things needed for the repairs would not have been invented yet. So what would happen, see, is that the crew would have to go out into the general public, and of course they would have to disguise themselves so as to avoid detection. Nevertheless, public education being what it is, they would probably be not too up on their ancient history, especially on the way we in the 21st century dress, act and especially the slang we use nowadays. They may not understand the meaning of "exact change" when using public transportation say, or explain their odd behavior by saying they "took too much LDS during Berkeley" or something like that. Anyway, they would be able to assemble all the necessary parts they needed for repairs from things that exist now - like capturing protons from a nuclear reactor - but there would remain one problem: how to fix the captain's reading light over his bed. The reading light, of course, would be a light-emitting LED, but the technology simply didn't exist to recreate that vital piece of ship's equipment in early 21st century America. And, because their memory of the past is so poor, they wouldn't remember who invented the darn thing so that they could pay him a visit and nudge him along. And by now they would probably be in a real hurry to get back, since it had been days that their captain, who is a horn dog, had gotten laid and he was starting to look at his crew mates a little funny, especially the one with the ears. So a couple of them would go to this guy and see that he was working with something similar and, overnight - like the shoemaker and the elves (a very improbably story) - they would make some "adjustments" to the guy's experiment and, voila, a lumpy LED bulb. They could then take the prototype, put it in the captain's overhead, and they could return back to the future just in time to save the galaxy from whatever threat it had been facing.

Of course, this is all conjecture.

:hi:

link:http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/8/8/9 http://www.rense.com/general20/transparentalum.htm

Seems like somebody couldn't stand the food on the Klingon warbird.

Great post!

http://www.solgel.com/articles/Sept01/ren_solar.htm

...now that would be something :-)

(The same idea is also used with thermophotovoltaic cells -- sunlight -- or something else -- heats a material that gives out a narrow high-IR emmission band, which is located right above a PV cell that acts on that frequency of IR.)

Along with the recent nanocrystal cells and other "light antenna" endeavors, nanotech is on the cusp of revolutionizing solar power. Now all we need is investment in scaling up manufacturing of the new technologies. So far only CIGS and the older plastics are produced in any respectable quantity at all.

However, lots of venture capalists are throwing money anything that has nano in its name.

Something this good is bound to piss SOME corporate cokesoaker off. They'll try to have this "forgotten" just like the ultra-efficient batteries and carburetors we keep hearing about...

I'm not actually paranoid. I'm just fifty years old. :evilgrin:

How do you excite the dots? Show them dirty pictures off of the internet? ;-)

of these.

putting knowledge together in new ways to create things that we can't imagine at the moment, but we will rediscover everything we have already invented.
We need more kids exposed to math and science and they need to have exposure to hands-on engineering in the k-5th grade.

If the oceans die the food chain goes/
if the food chain goes most will not survive/
if the rain forrest is destroyed we lose the oxygen supply

and many people think we're in the age of discovery?
yeah---Discovering just how much we've screwed up!!

The age of GREED

Incandescent light bulbs are already banned in my house. Unless I really need a small space heater, in which case they work a lot better.