Posted on 06/02/2009 9:19:08 AM PDT by Freeport
New approach offers more pleasant light of traditional bulbs without the energy guilt
Thanks to a bit of ingenuity, Chunlei Guo, associate professor of optics at the University of Rochester, and his assistant Anatoliy Vorobyev have been able to squeeze out fluorescent-like energy performance from an incandescent light bulb. The breakthrough boils down to a laser treatment of the bulb's tungsten filament, a processing step which could one day become a standard in the light bulb industry.
Traditionally, incandescent light bulbs provide more pleasant light, however they lack the efficiency of fluorescent designs. The new bulb offers the brightness and color of a 100 watt incandescent bulb while using less than 60 watts.
The key is to blast the tungsten filament with an ultra-fast, ultra-powerful laser, which creates beneficial nanostructures on the metal's surface. Describes Professor Guo, "We've been experimenting with the way ultra-fast lasers change metals, and we wondered what would happen if we trained the laser on a filament. We fired the laser beam right through the glass of the bulb and altered a small area on the filament. When we lit the bulb, we could actually see this one patch was clearly brighter than the rest of the filament, but there was no change in the bulb's energy usage."
The pulse lasts a mere femtosecond, and delivers as much power as the entire grid of North America into a needle point size spot. Serendipitously, this strange treatment yields nanostructures and microstructures which turn a low-wattage incandescent light bulb into a high brightness one, while preserving its energy sipping character.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailytech.com ...
I was thinking the same thing.
New approach offers more pleasant light of traditional bulbs without the energy guilt... Traditionally, incandescent light bulbs provide more pleasant light, however they lack the efficiency of fluorescent designs. The new bulb offers the brightness and color of a 100 watt incandescent bulb while using less than 60 watts.My energy guilt level was already pretty low. Those having trouble with this, just think of Al Gore's mansion and his SUVs.
...an ultra-fast, ultra-powerful laser... pulse lasts a mere femtosecond, and delivers as much power as the entire grid of North America into a needle point size spot.Huh?
Whoa???
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.