Light Up Your Indoor Sky
Sitting in an enclosed room with fluorescent lighting all day at work can be depressing. But researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering in Germany bring the outdoors to indoor spaces with a luminous ceiling that simulates clouds passing overhead. The ceiling is made of red, blue, green, and white LED tiles to create more than 16 million colors. The scientists say the dynamic lighting can increase productivity without being a distraction. The lighting system will start at $1,279 per square meter.
Bringing light to the poor, one liter at a time
July 11 A bottled liter of water with a few teaspoons of bleach is proving to be a successful recipe for dwellers in the light-deprived slums of the Philippines. The simple technology is spreading sunlight in places where it has never been, and saving residents money at the same time. To learn more about this effective and inexpensive lighting solution, watch the video here. Gemma Haines reports.
Chlorine Layer Brightens LED Lights
A sheet of chlorine only one atom thick has been found to make light-emitting diodes (LED lights) more energy-efficient. Engineers in Canada placed the sheet on an industry-standard electrode material used in flat-panel displays and found that it more than doubled efficiency at high brightness levels. It also eliminated the need for other costly layers of materials and reduced the number of steps needed in manufacturing LED lights, cutting the ultimate production cost.