Guest essay by Eric Worrall
What could be better for providing light in a poor country with no electricity than a cheap kerosene lamp? A group of renewable entrepreneurs think they have found the answer – meet Gravity Light, a third world LED lighting system powered by lifting a bag containing 12Kg (27lb) of rocks every 20 minutes.
GravityLight Brings Clean Energy to Kenya
In Kenya it’s estimated that one in seven people live without access to electricity. Sixty eight percent of Kenyans rely on kerosene as their main source of energy. Kerosene is expensive as a fuel, and can be dangerous as a flammable in the household. GravityLight is one of several startup companies working to make clean and renewable energy and lighting available to families in Kenya and around the world. The foundation has partnered with Shell to send more than 3,000 lights to families in Kenya.
…
The light isn’t very bright. According to the specification;
| Product weight (empty bag) | 1.2 kg / 2.6 lbs |
| Max loaded bag weight | 12.5 kg / 27.5 lbs |
| Nominal Voltage | 2.7 V DC |
| Max current | <0.031 A |
| Max electrical power | 0.085 W |
| Luminous flux | 15 lm |
| Luminous efficiency | 208 lm/W |
| Colour temperature | 5000 K |
| Colour Rendering Index | > 70 |
| Beam angle | 147o |
Read more: Specification Document
But hey, the idea has an endorsement from Bill Gates. And think of the health benefits. Instead of studying for hours by the steady flame of a kerosene lamp, risking DVT from all that sitting down, every 20 minutes someone has to winch up a heavy bag of rocks.
Perhaps the benefits will spread to first world countries. Who needs an industrial economy and a steady supply of fossil fuel powered electricity, when you can have the healthy exercise benefits of owning a human powered gravity light?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
One step closer to that hamster on a treadmill.
You won the thread.
Actually it reminds me more of a mouse on a waterslide or a spider trapped in your bathtub.
I have an idea. Why not burn a gram or so of hydrocarbon oil/wax/whatever every 20 minutes? And then, and then arrange a bunch of grams in sequence so you don’t have to ‘reload’ all the time…..Just an idea.
Think of all those poor hamsters you will save from a life of misery…
I have a hand-crank led flashlight. What’s the difference here?
You have to be really good at cranking that handle 😉
Yeah, Pop, I’ve got a couple of those, and they work pretty well, with three LEDs . . When I first read the blurb on the homepage, I thought there would be a much longer downside, so to speak ; )
I also have a few solar charge path-lights I use as if candles, when the power goes out, and have used when camping. I got them for very cheap, A few hours of available light each night should be easily maintainable, in the tropics especially so . . This newfangled 20 minute wonder would be better than nothing no doubt, but I’d much rather have a well designed small solar/battery light.
“JohnKnight November 26, 2016 at 12:24 am
…but I’d much rather have a well designed small solar/battery light.”
Exactly! We have them all over Australian cities powering lights in public areas like parks etc and signs etc. Work very very well and are almost maintenance free and no need for someone to “recharge” the system every 20 mins.
I use to have a travel device that worked by foot power. Old tech.. — Eugene WR Gallun
Garrity Power Lite 3 LED Crank Light
Price: $29.16
* Self-powered flashlight ideal for power outages, camping, and traveling
• Provides up to one hour of bright light per minute of cranking
• Three super-bright LED bulbs; sealed, rechargeable NiMH battery
• Magnifying lens casts a bright beam; comfortable rubberized grip
• Lightweight, compact housing; lifetime warranty on the fixture
https://www.amazon.com/GARRITY-Bright-Rechargeable-Emergency-Flashlight/dp/B000FLECU8
Eight years with a Democrat President and it will be a job posted in the internet. Hopefully, by then they will have those Treadmill generators.
“have a few solar charge path-lights ”
Took just the light part of two of those on a camping trip and they were great in the tent.
That flashlight uses a rechargeable battery which eventually dies. This scheme seems to have no battery being charges. The power is generated as needed. So the equivalent would be constantly cranking a flashlight.
Rocks last longer than the rechargeable batteries in those flashlights. I’ve thrown several of those things away.
Like we say in the engineering world when some marketing wonk thinks they have a notion, “A bad idea whose time has come.”
But you must admit that this concept rocks.
ROFL 🙂
Rocks are involved, all right.
This always assumes that your shanty hut will support the weight and you can get hold of rocks/cement blocks that aren’t being used to support someone else’s hut.
James Bull
Ve haf vays of making you all green white boy….mwahahahahahahahaha…
That thing is extremely efficient in use of energy. If it’s 10 kg dropping 1 meter in 20 minutes, that’s 98N X .00084 m/sec or .08 Watts [1 Watt = 1 N-m/sec] . If the LEDs including circuitry are really 208 lumens/W, that’s 17 lumens.
I once had a US Navy diver on a treadmill putting out about 250W for a half hour. That’s the best he could do. It gives you a lot of respect for the energy in burning fuel.
Some more perspective.
In my mid 50’s, I can still manage 237 watts during a half hour Functional Threshold Power test on the bicycle. FTP testing determines maximum sustained aerobic power. Most of my racing buddies are in the low 300’s. They tolerate my anemic FTP power because if I survive to the end, my all fast-twitch muscle fibers will produce 1,300 watts for about a minute, which is good for about 40 mph in the lead-out sprint train. Professional (un-doped) cyclists are in the low 400’s watts for FTP. The best are around 450 watts.
But the human body runs around 25% efficiency, so I am burning somewhere north of 900 calories per hour to produce anything over 200 watts. The average human stores a little more than 24 hours of sugar supply in the muscles, or for me about 2,400 calories. At 900 calories per hour, that sugar runs out in about 2 hours, 40 minutes, and from them on calories have to be supplied by fats, which requires 30% more oxygen to metabolize, and since we are already at our aerobic maximum this forces a 30% reduction in power, which is also known as hitting the wall. And the brain runs only on sugar, so hitting the wall and running out of sugar makes you stupid. So for longer courses, we have to dial back the power, or cram in some more sugar during the ride so we don’t run out. In the end, if you expect to produce power for say an 8 hour day, you have to dial the power down to about 100 watts, or you just will not have enough fuel to make it to the end, and even then you will end up lighter due to supplemental fat burning.
urederra — Kyle k wins. Damn and its fhe first post.. — Eugene WR Gallun..
As a kid, this kind of olden-days technology is exactly what popped into my mind when people said,
“Many hands make light work.”
I guess that puts me somewhere on the spectrum.
Or a bigger generator on a hill with a shitload of really big rocks, that will do for a whole village! Duh, why didn’t I think of that!
Remember Soylent Green.
This reminds me of the article by the author of Dansdata who ripped into an environmental award winning ‘gravity lamp’ – which he writes no one actually tested before handing out the award..
He wrote of the Gravia light way back in 2008, but seems you can’t keep a goofy idea down. Well worth reading his thoughts on the matter.
Possibly this new gravity light is just the inevitable outcome of making learning ‘easier’ for people such that they need never heart their brains by doing something so mundane as researching (I saw this with science advanced diploma’s being dumbed down to the point graduating students didn’t know what pH meant.. and I quit lecturing in disgust)
sorry for the link fail – it’s
http://www.howtospotapsychopath.com/2008/03/03/stop-press-pixie-dust-unsuitable-for-household-lighting/
and the offending gadget concept art.
Gravia light
That sounds like something to market to academics so they can keep on working on their grant applications at night during wind / solar induced power outages.
One step closer to the “personal energy board” in Glen Beck’s fictional book “Agenda 21”. Big Brother is watching.
I saw this in a “BestofYouTube” video a couple years back…maybe 18 months.
I judge the technology as a stopgap survival type technology. So it is OK. I am not enamored with its novelty.
What would be better is a more intelligent division of labor brought on by work specialization and a stable government. Erect power lines, build power plants, lay water pipes and sewer lines. This requires social change and the end of tribal warfare.
Instead we tell these poor people to hang in there with their corrupt socialist governments and live the green religion. Do as the UN dictates, use gravity rock lights, like a green peace wilderness nut job.
The answer to 3rd world poverty is to allow them to burn coal, oil, gas, and get rid of their tyrant leaders propped up by the UN.
IMO
Amen, Amen, Amen
Paul wrote – ” The answer to 3rd world poverty is to allow them to burn coal, oil, gas, and get rid of their tyrant leaders propped up by the UN. ” – kind of what Western Society did to progress out of the horse and buggy era
“The answer to 3rd world poverty is to allow them to burn coal, oil, gas, and
get rid oftheir tyrant leaders propped up by the UN.”FIFY.
heh heh touche
Bear,
Most apposite.
+ several. a
Although the energy gained may be minimal [except for Fat Boy Kim?] the example is salutary!
Auto
+ many Paul.
15 or 20 years ago, I saw a TV program about somebody that made a clockwork radio. It was for similar places, where people had no electricity and no money to buy batteries. Frankly, I think that this light would work better off clockwork.
A clock with the same operating torque as the Rocky Horror Chandelier would shear all the teeth off its gears in a day.
I am old enough to remember wind up watches. We can sell them to the college snowflakes as an environmentally sound alternative to battery driven watches. Run articles about the millions of watch batteries polluting our landfills. Save the planets! The money will roll in!!!!
Eugene WR Gallun
Hivemind, that is what Pop Piasa is talking about up-thread at 7.26pm. I have a couple on my boat.
“I saw a TV program about somebody that made a clockwork radio”
Here you go:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Baylis
I’ve never seen a clockwork radio. Saw a clockwork orange though.
Good Lord! I’ve got two watches…both wind-up models and I’ve still got a clockwork radio somewhere, I’m obviously completely out of date.
Eugene WR Gallun
November 26, 2016 at 2:28 am I am old enough to remember wind up watches.
I am old enough to remember them AND still have two working versions, one of which is a 22 jewel kinetic automatic which is about 50 years old and the other a genuine 17 jewel wind up, which is about 60 years old.
My wife has a vintage ladies Cocktail Watch which is nearly 100 years old and still working.
I’ve had Casio solar watches for the past 20 years. Never changed a battery, and they have never not worked. And, they’re calibrated with the Atomic clock in Colorado. Never had to set the time.
Jeff Alberts,
The Casio “Wave Ceptor”, I have one one on my wrist also. One of the best uses of solar power. I’m planning on upgrading to a Citizen EcoDrive this year. Same concept, but better quality.
My latest is a Pro-Trek, much more expensive than I usually go for, but since it’s Casio I went for it.
I’ve had the Citizen Wingman before. Was not impressed for a $150 watch 20 odd years ago. The band came apart in less than a year, the rotating bezel came off after a couple of years. All battery, had to replace it twice I think in 3 years. Maybe they’re better now, but once bitten…
I remember self-winding watches. The had some kind of weight on a slide internal, every time you moved, the weight would slide back and forth, as it slid the weight would hit a lever causing the spring to be wound up one tick.
Eugene WR Gallun
I am old enough to remember wind up watches.
I remember my first luxury purchase out of boot camp was a Seiko self winding watch. A few months later I bought a plastic Texas Instruments LED watch where to avoid wearing the batteries down you only saw the time when you pressed the button. My first foray into consumer electronics.
Regime change for people too ignorant to even know what that is merely means more civil war, warlords, squalid permanent refugee camps, and social chaos in the ensuing power vacuum. Meanwhile the children don’t go to school, and then become easy manipulations for death squad recruitment as illiterate teenagers. Repeat.
So the solution is to leave them under the current warlord?
Been there, seen that, smelled that. These leftarded a$$holes have never had to collect and bury the remains of the children, elderly and women their leftist ideology has systematically murdered. F*ck them.
So inspiring! Wouldn’t that be fun to insert in a 6-12 grade world geography class!
And what do you do in the meantime? Zambia has coal…but the mines have been left to ruin and the rail lines are in disrepair. There are no coal powerplants in operation. Zambia has hydroelctric power, but the twin governments of Zambia and Zimbabwe have allowed the reservoir of the Kariba Dam to drop lower than they should have, so the entire nation is living on rationed electric power, while paying customers (like neighboring nations) get priority. It is all very well to declare a truism about what people should do in the long term…but the long term will not arrive until the political system is rectified to make it possible, and meanwhile the struggle to live is a daily one.
I do not scoff at this gravity-lamp approach. At least you can give it to someone, and they have usable light when they need it. My cat weighs 16 pounds, so lifting 27.5 pounds is not unduly onerous. My briefcase seems to weigh as much. I would hope the lifting distance is not much more than a meter, just for the sake of comfort.
It is clear, you have no idea what it is like to NOT have electricity. Knucklehead.
Yes. Socialists. Marxists. People keep making my point for me, over and repeatedly like. Its eerie.
Hi, 2hotel9:
Gee, whiz. No electricity. I guess I didn’t get through a week of power outage in December during snow, when the only heat I had was burning wood in a cast iron stove, and the only light came from LED lanterns. This would not have been the first or only time. On previous occasions, I used kerosene lanterns, both with and without modern mantles (it makes a difference). I had to put all our refrigerated food out in the snow. We were lucky the municipal water supply was working. And this was in the heart of darkness of liberal Puget Sound (Federal Way, population 75,000…and as many 100-foot-tall Douglas Firs). Oh, yes. I had to chop the wood for burning. We would stoke it to reach 90 deg F in our family room and then bank the fire and rely on the stove to keep residual heat in the house until morning, when the cycle started all over again. We used handcloth baths (not brave enough for cold showers).
Yeah, I guess we knuckleheads know nothing about what it is like to NOT have electricity. Or…who is the real knucklehead?
You were inconvenienced for a few days and that makes you SOOOO special. Your self imposed martyrdom shows you to be a knucklehead. I heat using wood and gas every winter, have 2 kerosene heaters for backups and use on job sites, oil/kerosene lamps(hanging and free standing), have rebuilt 2 spring fed catch basins so we don’t have to depend on municipal water and multiple electric generators for emergencies and job sites. All of this makes me not a martyr, it makes me a prepared, intelligent citizen.
Please feel free to pull that thorn crown tight on your head and rend your garments and wail about how special you are. I’ll continue to laugh at your dumb a$$.
2hotel9:
What is the matter with you? In no way am I trying to set myself up as a martyr or anything else. I was just trying to emphasize that lack of electricity in Zambia was a serious problem, and we ought not dismiss it as being a trivial inconvenience. Do you disagree with this message?
In any case, you came out with the presumption that I knew NOTHING about what being without electricity was like. Well, I knew a little something–and now you chastise me for not living off the land, like you do. I guess if I lived in the middle of Montana, or somewhere between Ellensburg and Spokane, doing so might be necessary. But I have the wonderful privilege of living in an electrified western urban environment, and I have a due appreciation for that privilege. Zambians also have that appreciation…when the government is not turning off the lights on them, paralyzing anything resembling modern life.
But what I can say about your lifestyle is that it is redolent of luxury, compared to the rural poor in Zambia. Access to, and the ability to purchase wood, gas, kerosene. Springs of water. Stoves & heaters, lamps, LED lanterns, catch basins. My wife’s father was once the Minister of Forestry for Zambia, and his project was to proliferate tree farms (Eucalyptus) to increase the forestation. It got to the point where wood was a valuable export. He died. Time passes. The Zambians have been burning down all their trees to produce charcoal for heating and cooking. Kerosene (paraffin) is dear, when it is even available. Equipment is expensive. Good water is not generally available. In the outskirts of Lusaka, my stepchildren are reporting the municipal water supply is providing dilute and detestable goop (treatment system has not been cleaned out, due to lack of funds and electricity). Mind you, Lusaka is the capital. President Lungu and his chief henchmen go about in Mercedes-Benzes.
Be smug and enjoy your access to 20th century technology in the midst of the planet’s most technologically endowed nation. It is yours for the taking, and it is good. God bless you. But also pity what the Zambians are doing without.
Son, you cried about being out of electricity for a few days, people in Africa, Asia, South America and right here IN America live their lives with no electricity. Tell your sob stories to someone else. You don’t impress me and you damned sure don’t impress any of them.
And why are you hung up on Zambia, boy? Did you see that name on NatGEO yesterday? Compared to Zimbabwe, Rawanda, Republic of Congo, Sudan, Somalia et al Zambia is a glittering jewel of progress. Oy vey.
2hotel9:
Uh, I’m married to a Zambian, and have 3 stepchildren in Lusaka, and numerous family connections (her side) in Zambia and Zimbabwe. But what do I know? I only get the story from the people who are there. I must be a knucklehead.
In case you haven’t noticed, I have been trying to emphasize that their plight is serious and beyond any inconvenience that we live through. Do you want to argue that it isn’t? Then we have no argument. Have a good night…with or without electricity.
You keep acting like one that is what you are perceived to be. Been there and done that, every bit of it wasted by the people IN Africa continuing to embrace socialism. Once they are ready to throw that sh*t off get back to me, till then it is ALL wasted.
Greens just don’t much like people.
They don’t like plants either.
They don’t like anything.
No, they are very fond of themselves. — Eugene WR Gallun
It’s other people they don’t like.
or facts.
It would be interesting to know how many of these could have been purchased, for every return plane ticket to Marrakech that US Taxpayers have just paid for.
You win. Best reply in the thread. A 15 watt LED is somewhere around a 70-80 watt incandescent so nice an bright. No need to buy fuel so you can spend the money on other stuff further stimulating the local economy.
By the way to those who think getting up every 20 minutes to lift a pile of rocks is somehow bad think about the fires from lamps that kill and maim thousands every year. Third world folks would laugh at the idea that getting up every 20 minutes was a hardship. They walk everywhere and do most chores manually. Don’t judge them by lazy first world behaviour.
No, TRM. Read the specs again. This thing produces only 0.085 Watts, & its light output is 15 lumen, probably not even as bright as a candle. It is at least white light, though, at 5000K.
At the 15 lumens in the specs, it produces a bit more than a typical candle at 12.7 lumens (and it’s ~500X as bright as a firefly). Hardly worth the effort, especially every 20 minutes. Reminds me of Sterling engines: clever, efficient, and cute to watch, but not very useful or practical.
sure- just go and trigger all of africa – that’ll be good.
the light is white? what were they thinking?!
besides that, it’s cultural expropriation.
techgm: The Swedish Navy would disagree with that. Their Gotland class submarine can stay underwater for weeks using its Stirling engine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotland-class_submarine
The reason you don’t see Stirling engines in cars is because they are more expensive to make. Mechanical Technology Inc had some nice prototype Stirling powered cars in 1970-1985. here’s a 1986 NASA report on their program. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19880002196.pdf
As a child one of my jobs was to maintain the oil lamps. That involved polishing the brass lamp bodies, cleaning the glass chimneys, trimming the wicks and re-filling the oid tanks.
Looking back it would have been much more fun to lift a bag of rocks every twenty minutes.
You folks never had to live without electricity for a single minute of your pampered lives……WAKE UP!
TRM — OK, you buy it and report back in a year. Make sure you get rid of all electric lights and even candles. No cheating. — Eugene WR Gallun
PS — You have obviously never held a job where you are physically tired at the end of the day.
I did misread the specs. My bad. I thought it was 15 watts which would be plenty bright. At 15 lumens well that is not very helpful. So this now falls into the nice idea but not very practical for the amount of light.
It is essentially a common childhood night-light. Just enough light to allow you to walk across a room – not enough for reading without straining your eyes.
First, we substitute light for darkness. Then we make the light brighter. This is called Enlightenment (and I’m not being arch).
Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. But it is totally foolish to curse the candle.
Funny that it’s always wealthy western new-colonialists living in luxury inventing devices requiring absurd levels of effort and discomfort for the poorest in the world which have the effect of delaying proper heating and lighting and freeing themselves from the poverty of “sustainability” (whatever that is supposed to be).
Actually kerosene is a great form of heating as anyone familiar with Japanese homes will tell you.
A great new” application for weight powered equipment! Clocks and Grandfather clocks have only used it since 1670.
My grandfather’s grandfather clock would run for a full week on one raising of the weights – over 500 times as long as this contraption.
My wife inherited a late 1800s 8-day kitchen clock that still keeps decent time (it needs a cleaning).
We also own her parents’ Grandfather clock built in 1970 which has weights for chimes and clockwork lasting 1 week.
Are you kidding? What’s wrong with stationary bicycle/dynamo? Or feet-powered sawing machine?
Stupid. But for the record, 27 pounds of rocks is not heavy except to unfit armchair Warmunists in sheltered places like Seattle or San Fran.. The old small rectangular twine bound hay bales on my Wisconsin dairy farm went ~60 pounds each, and we heaved hundreds of them per day from baled fields onto hay wagons using bale tongs, and then via a loader again via bale tongs onto the winter hay benches in the upper hay storage of the old barns. Cyrus McCormick invented haying technique from ~1850 to ~1990.
Much easier now using plastic mesh covered half ton round baler bales and a skid loader with bale prongs. No barn required. Square baler scrapped. Hay wagons scrapped. Upper barn now fit mainly for Halloween parties. Lower barn cows still very happy with hay. Just round steel framed feed pens rather than old linear feed troughs.
so those of us with multiple torn discs in spine limited to 15lbs lifting are warmunists?
🙂
would say this has survival benefits EXCEPT it reqs a mount and a weight falling to work.
From the linked article:
“One thing that Jim Reeves wanted to improve was the usability of the product. If a child was studying alone they might not have the ability to lift 12 kilograms of rocks, limiting their access to the light. This new redesign incorporates a winch so that anyone can pull the winch to lift the weights and gain twenty minutes of light.”
AMA/American Medical Association: ‘Human Health Impacts From LEDs’
‘Report of The Council On Science and Public Health’, 2016
“Human and Environmental Effects of Light Emitting Diode (LED) Community Street Lighting”
http://www.darksky.org/wp-content/uploads/bsk-pdf-manager/AMA_Report_2016_60.pdf
And:
AMA/ American Medical Association, June 14, 2016
‘AMA Adopts Guidance to Reduce Harm from High Intensity Street Lights’
http://www.ama-assn.org/ama-adopts-guidance-reduce-harm-high-intensity-street-lights
Seems there are some health and safety factors associated with LEDs and I have a few LEDs.
The health impact from LED streetlights is from ones where the high efficiency of white LEDs is used less for energy conservation, more for increasing the amount of light.
Could use a pulley system
Review Of Optometry
Wait for search results.
‘Seeing Blue: ‘The Impact of Excessive Blue Light Exposure’, April 15, 2016
In the article scroll down to: ”Impact on Refraction”
Article includes the use of LEDs for school lighting. Note the recommendation on LED use.
http://www.reviewofoptometry.com/search/?q=blue%20light
CORNELL CHRONICLE, June 8, 2016
‘Consumers sour on milk exposed to LED light’
“Got LED light? Display cases and grocery stores increasingly do. And that’s bad news for milk drinkers.”
More on LED effects on milk at:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/06/consumers-sour-milk-exposed-led-light
Those references are not based on medical health studies, Barbara. They’re guidance, based on possibilities; e.g. High intensity white light could affect night time rest, according to “large surveys”…
Nor is the announcement based on proven medical research. It is a statement against light pollution coupled with a bland activist statement regarding vague health and environment lighting effects.
LEDs emit specific frequencies, not broad ranges of light. Bright white LEDs originally came in response to the desire for bright illuminating light.
Demand is toward warmer multiple frequency, essentially friendlier home lighting. Light that does not wash out colors; a tough thing for LEDs to accomplish since individually, LEDs do not emit a full range of light frequencies.
LEDs constructed for plant growth utilize ranges of LEDs to maximize plant growth.
Similar arrays of LEDs can resemble the broad range of daylight or incandescent light frequencies.
There are LED replacement bulbs for home fixtures that are not the blindingly white or numbing blue that most older LEDs produced. Also dimable and 3 level for residential use. I tried the early LED replacement bulbs for MagLight flashlights etc and they SUCKED, newer ones are excellent. I carry a Tasco LED flashlight on me at all times(Never know when you are going to be in the dark) and it casts a strong beam out to 120 feet in total darkness and works very well in crawlspaces and attics. Left it in a drop ceiling, on high, for 3 days. It was still working and the batteries lasted another month before replacing. LED has come a long way in a short time with ZERO government subsidies and no laws/regulations requiring their use. Imagine that! Market forces at work.
Also, been using LED “christmas” lights for shop and business applications. Put 3 strings under the bar at my local watering hole and they have been able to stop using most of their florescent overheads. Another business we put single bulb ceiling fixtures up to replace the 4 foot by 2 foot florescents, using a dimable LED 60watt replacement bulb and greatly improved their dining and bar area lighting. Customers immediately began commenting on how much better the lighting was. And both cases saw less electric use. It is an amazing and wonderful world we have managed to stumble our way into!
Research & Reviews: Journal of Food and Dairy Technology
‘The Need for Study of Led Light’s Capacity to Damage Fluid Milk’, Pub.May 20, 2016
Abstract at:
http://www.rroij.com/open-access/the-need-for-study-of-led-lights-capacity-to-damage-fluid-milk-.pdf
Use container that blocks light from milk. Knucklehead.
2hotel9:
Yes, LEDs started off as basic electronic component usage as a diode.
Initial light emitting diodes were dull and dim, good for indicator lights.
The light emission tended to be frequency specific and yes, market desire coupled with customer demand slowly brought LED efficiency and brightness from dull and dim to bright.
A large part of that demand came from people losing their quality incandescent lights and suffering under flickering fluorescent lights.
That bright white/blue LEDs took longer to develop. There are several decades of work and research behind the current state of LED lights.
Barbara:
Light spectrum destruction of vitamins in milk has been identified for several decades.
If you want healthful milk, you’d transfer all milk from translucent materials into absolute light blocking stainless steel containers. Next up to worry about is oxidation caused by milk exposure to oxygen in air. One can always buy some compressed CO2 to spray in the container to displace that nasty O2.
There is little difference between LED light and any other light, except that LEDs are restricted to narrow bands of light emission frequencies.
CBC News, Feb.26, 2016
‘LED traffic lights trouble in winter because they don’t melt snow’
“New LED bulbs don’t generate the same amount of heat the old incandescent bulbs did, so they don’t melt the snow that builds up in traffic lights.”
Article includes photo of a snow covered traffic light.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/led-traffic-lights-trouble-in-winter-because-they-don-t-melt-snow-1.3465301
I have seen this here in western PA. Pointed it out to a friend works for PENNDOT and he said not to worry! His union has already put in the bid to hire specialty workers to clean them off for only $65.000.000 per year, so we are saved!
Unless you have more than one of them, the it will be dark while you are lifting the weight.
Of course you are going to need more than one if you expect to have enough light to actually do anything useful.
Of course if you have more than one, you have spend that much more time lifting the weight on each one.
Eventually you reach the point where you are going to spend all of your time lifting weights, no time left to do anything useful.
I doubt the fully grown adults would lift the weight, after the novelty wore off they would more likely delegate to the nearest kid, who would in turn delegate to smaller kids…
I would guess the novelty would wear off in about 20 mins….
One of the stories mentioned adding an overload warning to the original version, obviously people trying to boost the light by adding more rocks…
head wall………..
I liked the “Soccket” ball:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2013/11/21/the-soccer-ball-that-helps-kids-in-underdeveloped-areas-finish-homework/
If I had this current thing, I’d run a rope to the door and every opening and closing of the door would add charge. Or build a platform that you step on to, then it descends like an elevator. Us a ramp to get into the house and the moving platform when leaving.
However, Paul W. at 4:12 is spot-on. Join the developed world.
And you’ve only just BEGUN with the warning labels for that sukkah. They will probably cost more than the light.
and would you leave them in the dark unable to read the Swahili translation of Finnegan’s Wake they labored in the mines all week to be able to purchase?
Eric Worrall — So true. i am the youngest of 3 brothers. — Eugene WR Gallun
ristvan November 25, 2016 at 4:27 pm
Eric Worrall November 25, 2016 at 4:33 pm
Guys bad bad idea, you are forgetting we are Americans. Well if 27 LBS of weight will produce 15lm what would 150 LBs do. Yup I can see it now “Hey Bubba help me left this”. Ever hear the caution “don’t let rednecks play with anti-matter? Any, all of us would be heck bent on improving it
Note disclaimer a few days ago during a thunderstorm we had our power go out. I’m still laughing.
michael
ristvan November 25, 2016 at 4:27 pm
Joking aside this is the typical stupid idea that someone who lives in a advanced society makes when trying to help less advanced.
What happens when something breaks? No hardware store for a couple hundred miles, and if they dispensed with all their lamps and candles?
You don’t give Tech that the recipient can’t reproduce on their own.
michael
Really, how many 1st world consumers even understand the tech they use every day? let alone have the ability to reproduce it.
Not needed. Plenty of places where broken tech can be fixed or replaced. In first world countries the infrastructure is in place so that each individual does not need to know how to fix everything.
My first job was $0.50/hour or a penny a bale whichever was higher!
We’re almost related.
Been there, done that!
Luxury. We used live in a shoe-box, in road, and every morning we had a load of rotten fish dumped all over us.
Heck, So you got breakfast in bed.. now that is looxury !
Cardboard?
I hope you seized your opportunity to learn fish slapping.
FWIW, 12kg is basically six full 2-liter soda bottles. Your local grocery store will probably only put two in a bag — three if you ask. A bag with six such bottles is heavier than most folks wish to carry. It’s also heavy enough to possibly rip the handles off a reusable cloth bag. (I’ve had that happen). OK for a healthy adolescent or adult. Definitely too much for small children, the sick, the frail, the elderly, or folks with bad backs.
“Don K November 25, 2016 at 11:05 pm
Definitely too much for small children, the sick, the frail, the elderly, or folks with bad backs.”
Which you find more of in poor, rural areas in Africa.
I love you ristvan. You clearly know what it is like to live on a farm.
What an unbelievably arrogant, self-absorbed bunch of assholes. I mean that’s just obnoxious.
I agree. +
True. Why don’t they just stop breeding?
I mean, over many decades the entire world has been hammered by images from Cambodia and Africa full of starving children in countries run by despots. The parents can barely feed themselves already. Seriously, what’s the message here?
Stop breeding, die out and there’s nobody for the despots to lord over anymore, then they too die out. Job done.
That,,,,,was simply spectacular! You win AlGore:Thegoreacles’ intrawebs thingy for the day!
Small populations V big ones.. I’ve had this conversation many a time with well meaning folk and it’s a matter of perspective – them imaging our current standard of living but with reduced numbers resulting in a better quality of life.. Sure this is kind of what happened with the Spanish flu ripping through the world resulting in a concentration of wealth for the survivors, but it also meant setbacks that took time (and more people) to overcome.
But it ignores the efforts of the many people who contributed to the raising of this standard before they were sacrificed. Fewer people means less to do maintenance, less brains contributing to problem solving and clever steps forward.. it means like in many small Australian towns you do not get a hospital or maybe even a school – there needs to be a critical mass of people to have these things – and in the Australian example, there’s a nation of wealth which can subsidize these smaller towns. Paved roads become a luxury.. I’m reminded of the story of a Scot called Calum who spent 10 years building 1 3/4 miles of road by himself. You don’t get roads without a critical mass, you don’t get power stations.
Telling people who can find themselves penniless and with no social security to keep them alive to stop having children who can help keep them alive seems cruel.. and of course you can’t just have one or two given the lack of available medicine.. child mortality, illness and accidents are going to take a few out of the picture. My wife’s grandmother was married off when she was 14.. had 10 living children who made it to adulthood (no one knows how many did not survive), buried all but one and even some of her grand children before she herself left this world..
the command ‘Die out’ .. delivered to others seems very harsh. I’m sure you might see this if you think about it from your own point of view? Those images we’ve been hammered with of carefully selected poor people were often to guilt us into making donations to wealthy western corporations to provide aid..
Look around yourself, without a vast number of people almost nothing you see would exist – it’s hard to have the time to build an iPhone when you’re swatting flies away while you’re grubbing the forest floor for food
Thanks for the input, ЯΞ√ΩLUT↑☼N @ur momisugly November 25, 2016 at 10:59 pm
But the solution is known: Cheap energy > labour saving devices > increased productivity > time and opportunity for education > more prosperous society > rapid decline in population growth.
Summed up nicely here: Hans Rosling and the magic Washing Machine)
How many times do you have to tell people to boil their drinking water and not to urinate/defecate in their local springs/streams/river? Apparently we have not reached that magical number since we have been doing it for around 200 years now. Perhaps this is also an indicator of why socialism keeps being so persistently embraced in these places.
Too right. Why constantly give “aid” when there’s a very high chance that much of it reaches only the despotic grabbermint in that country?
For the rest, making cheap energy available to those without a means to pay for it except using maybe dung is pointless.
Can’t help people who won’t help themselves.
Fifteen lumens?
A candle would last longer.
Indeed!
Can the device be ‘pre-charged’ by lifting the weight a dozen or a hundred times?
Spring controlled pocket watches were designed centuries ago; built upon older technology based on using weights, gearing and chains. Essentially reaching spring controlled perfection early in the 20th Century. Modern wind up watches use a person’s normal motions and activities to keep a watch ‘wound’.
Now, allegedly, some urban art nouveau students of the electrical grid have again devised a chain driven clock; taking modern non electrical grid society back at least 300 years.
Such genius.
Care to lay odds that the dang thing is noisy too?
I have this little device, an NSD Powerball, for exercise. Just by holding the ball while swinging one’s hand in tight circles, spins an internal weighted gyro. The faster the gyro spins, the brighter led lights flash. There are apparently folks who try and spin the little gyro over 20,000 rpm.
In a world that easily designs and constructs such devices, one would expect modern society to build a much brighter, less intrusive much longer lasting device.
It’s parallel-thinking to the wind-up flashlight/radio products (which I think are brilliant for when the power goes off, or was never there in the first place when the sun goes down.
The treadmill analogy, adduced above, is a perfect rejoinder. It’s fine, so long as the jail-birds(?) driving it don’t drop dead of starvation. As the Russians so acutely manipulated the energy-balances to the last Calorie in the Siberian gulags, so we get to the $-efficiency of man-powered (or horse-powered, for that matter) generation at the margin: that is, $-worth of Calories to *just* keep the treadmill operators alive, vs. alt. methods.
Soon, we hit upon economies-of-scale, and — lo! — the Industrail Revolution makes sense …. RIGHT! (Economies of Scale and Thermal Efficiency seem to be long-forgotten truisms!)
They need a TV and a fridge too. So I would prefer a small windmill or some solar cells with a generator when both fail.
Around a thousand dollars worth of small, portable high tech goodies in a place where the average wage is a dollar a day…
Griff is a great supporter of the project in Kenya to deploy 10,000 homes with………a solar powered light and TV.
I’ll take door #2. The Scrubber-equipped coal plant with matching water treatment and sewage facility combo.
Well, first you have to have cheap energy to o create good jobs so they can afford to buy windmills and solar cells. — Eugene WR Gallun
Then take away the cheap energy and watch them regress.
I imagine a similar amount of energy could be generated with a handful of loose change and half a cup of urine…
Now, THAT must be worth a research grant if anything is!
Agreed, a bag of rocks is a ridiculous way to produce power. Those little fans you put on top of your wood burner, powered by a sterling engine, produce that kind of energy. Totally safe, they can be made of really cheap materials such as heat resistant plastic. All they need is a source of heat.
Eric, your ignorance of reality is astounding. Those little fans are not powered by Sterling engines. They are powered by the Peltier–Seebeck effect. I suggest that you learn about such things before you make a fool of your self.
If you bothered to watch the video you would have seen the piston – not needed on a thermoelectric device.
Don’t have to watch your stupid video……..Sterlings are not cost effective.
…
Ever check Amazon?
..
https://www.amazon.com/Wood-Stove-Fan-Heat-Powered/dp/B00H2TECU6
…
You ever hear the phrase “cost effective?”
…
You really are ignorant
HENRYSatSHAMROCK@aol.com November 25, 2016
and
What unpleasant and unnecessary remarks in what is, after all, a fairly light-hearted thread. Some people would do well to learn some manners before exhibiting their social failings.
Eric: Robert Stirling patented the engine that runs on a unique thermodynamic cycle. Please spell his name correctly. [Other cycles are Otto (most car engines), Brayton (Airplane turbine engines), Rankine (steam engines) and Carnot is the theoretical benchmark for comparing them] I admit, I’m a nerd, and yes, I have plans to make a Stirling fan copy of the common kitchen table alcohol powered fan of 1900.
http://home.cogeco.ca/~obosma/hafan.jpg
dan no longer in CA — I am an alcohol powered fan. Watch sports all the time. — Eugene WR Gallun
HENRYSatSHAMROCK@aol.com November 25, 2016 at 5:15 pm
Thank you for you self disqualification.
HENRYSatSHAMROCK@aol.com November 25, 2016 at 5:34 pm
“Sterlings are not cost effective.”
What are you babbling about? they use heat from the stove to power a fan. Where is the cost? Are you trying to say that the heat used to power the fan is more then you would get from not having the unit to begin with?
Name calling is bad form unless I do it,
respectfully michael
Ha! Eugene wins!: 🙂
“Gravity Light: Our Renewable Energy Future”
Well, rail gravity storage seems to be a good idea. So, even though you are just taking a cheap shot at renewable energy systems, you may actually be right.
As for the gravity light, you don’t even pretend to take a serious look at the idea. I suppose you think the real answer for people in Kenya is to have a proper power grid.. Well, great, but they don’t, and unless you are going to go there and build and maintain it for them, they will still need to rely on other alternatives, and the gravity light actually works, and does something useful.
Probably not a bad idea, actually. If you are out in the middle of nowhere with no electricity.
These sorts of kinetic electric generators used to be something of a joke, but now with ultra-low power electronics being all the rage among the EE crowd, more and more devices will be able to make use of this.
I would bet that the system is way cheaper and more reliable than a solar cell+battery combo. If your needs are small and intermittent, there is probably a niche for this sort of thing, just like the old hand crank flashlights, or explosive detonator boxes.
they make great flashlights when you go to the corner store at night, too
i think they already tried the solar powered night light.
it turns out that you need diesel generators to power the lamps that shine on the solar cells…
I still prefer clockwork. But anyway, very suitable for anywhere that there isn’t reticulated power, like Kenya or South Australia.
Why was there no mention of the distance the rocks needed to be lifted to provide 20 minutes of light per the specs?
have a wind mill do the lifting, green green
That’s a practical application of green technology.
If you have several weights so as you can store the energy for when the wind doesn’t blow.
by golly, a rock battery …
This would work in America instead of Michelle’s food program. The cycle time would have to be cut down to 5 minutes and any child with a high BMI would get the honors.
To help put this miraculous 15 lumen advance in technology into context – this mini pen torch (see link) which operates from a single AAA battery – can produce 300 lumen max, or 15 lumen in low power mode for 7 hours. Obviously it can be run from a rechargeable battery. It’s just a random example chosen from many.
I think that I would rather recharge some batteries and have a handy mobile source of bright light – than spend my evenings lifting rocks and straining my eyes in the 15 lumen gloom.
I’m not saying that Africans should all buy top-notch U.S. manufactured flashlights.
They should be permitted to choose the best options which suit their needs, as we do.
But – the fact that a single AAA and LED combo can produce 20 times as much light – tells me all that I need to know.
I have 3 watts of warm white LED illuminating my desk and keyboard at this very moment. It is sufficient.
0.085watt would not be.
http://www.surefire.com/titan-b.html
Most lumen claims of flashlights are greatly overstated. 300 lumens from an LED on a usual flashlight budget requires at least 2 watts (even though 15 lumens can be obtained from a single chip LED from significantly less than .1 watt due to nonlinearities that LEDs have). And the LED requires more voltage than a single AAA cell provides, so a boost converter is required, and it costs a lot to get a boost converter that is more than 75% efficient with 1.5V input and ~3 volts output. So, to get 300 lumens from a 1.5V battery is going to require over 2.5 watts or a high budget. Even at an extreme 210 lumens/watt, 300 lumens requires 1.43 watts – nearly am amp from a AAA cell, which a AAA cell can’t do for more than a few minutes, even if its datasheet says a majority of an amp-hour of charge (applicable at a low discharge rate and not considering the cell dead until it is down to 1.1 volts or something like this). 300 lumens is probably what the LED produces at its maximum power when cooled by Niagara Falls, bare from the LED before losses in following optics.
As for an amp from a AAA cell – once alkaline cells became the common chemistry of D, C, AA and AAA disposable batteries, flashlights using D cells got upgraded bulbs with premium fill gases and with current consumption increased from around .4-.5 amp to around .6-.9 amp. So did some with C cells, although C cell flashlights with the new premium bulbs did not shine bright long enough for most night hiking use. And 2-AA cell flashlights came alonmg, to use the old PR-2 bulbs. And 2-AAA-cell flashlights came along to use special bulbs with premium fill gases and current consumption around .25-.3 amp or so.
15 lumens is about the light output of a 4-watt 120V incandescent nightlight bulb, or in the range of flat wick kerosene lamps. It is also about the light output of an old-fashioned 2-D-cell or 2-C-cell flashlight using the PR-2 bulb / lamp.
Also, 15 lumens of 5000K LED light has more effectiveness in dim areas than 15 lumens of ~1900-2000 K kerosene lamp light or ~2300 K incandescent nightlight light because the LED light has greater stimulation of scotopic vision, or a higher scotopic/photopic ratio.
google ‘joule thief’. good to the last drop. they’ll drain that cell till it’s around 0.6v.
with a proportionally short duty cycle, and led can be overpowered in pulses that are very bright and persistence of vision makes the light seem brighter than the same average power at lower but continuous brightness.
http://www.rapidtables.com/calc/light/lumen-to-watt-calculator.htm
15 lumen LED needs @ur momisugly 0.25W
the tech advances daily…
I never trust any high power battery-LED device IF it doesn’t have a DC-DC driver.
Relying on stacking two 1.5V cells and then hoping that the voltage is matched to the LED’s needs is a shoddy approach. And then, this would fail to take consideration of the 1.2V of NiMh versus 1.5V of Alkaline. I always prefer to drive LED’s using a constant current source. i.e. I regulate for current not voltage.
I was aware that there are possibilities for exaggerated claims of high watts and high lumens.
But, I think that we can expect better fidelity to the actual real-world values from American and European manufacturers, than from the Chinese non-branded market. So, that’s why I chose a U.S. manufactured torch.
I’ve been using LED’s for torches and lighting, since I manufactured arrays of superbright LEDs to function as backlighting in my off-grid home, back in the 1990’s.
Initially, these served the purpose of allowing us to navigate in the dark, when the main generator and inverter were turned off, at night.
Now, I can buy cheap 3 or 5 watt torches which run from a couple of AA’s. They are COB technology.
A wide band of active material.
The principle downside, is that they are so bright that I have to put them inside a lampshade so that looking at them doesn’t temporarily compromise my vision.
Apologies for not going to town with analysis of the technical spec. discussed in my original post.
I was really only offering a general comparison.
I think that we can safely conclude that the torch that I pointed to is considerably brighter than the rock-lift assembly. I’m more inclined to doubt the veracity of the rock-lift lumen claims, than the AAA torch’s claims.
It’s some light. That’s better than none.
Compared to being on the grid it’s rubbish.
But compared to being off grid and wasting fuel on low energy necessities… it has a use.
For inconvenience, it’s not much worse than having to get up and put a coin in the meter.
Why not build a power station instead?
Well, do go to Kenya and build one. Let us know when you are done.
It charges a battery.
I’ve seen projects of this kind for over a decade now and the greenies still haven’t solved anything overall.
http://www.treehugger.com/gadgets/buy-one-give-one-solar-lamp-luci.html
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/can-a-tiny-weatherproof-solar-light-bulb-replace-kerosene-lights.html
sorry wrong post
This *is* a (small) power station!
Just bought a palm size backup LED/Radio for under $25. It has an LiIon battery with 1000mAH that can be charged via USB or handcrank..
The light gives 50 Lumens. One minute of cranking gives 30 minutes of light or 20 minutes of radio.
Wonder what the unit cost would be for 100K units?
A lot of work involved for just 20 mins of light, for goodness sake! They’d be better off with a string of solar-powered Christmeas lights. At least there would be a chance of a few hours’ worth at a time. Not so good in very shady places though.
Solar powered lights– think about it.
It charges a battery.
I’ve seen projects of this kind for over a decade now and the greenies still haven’t solved anything overall.
http://www.treehugger.com/gadgets/buy-one-give-one-solar-lamp-luci.html
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/can-a-tiny-weatherproof-solar-light-bulb-replace-kerosene-lights.html
It’s not much of an idea but no worse, if as bad, as lifting a heavy weight every 20 mins! My string of lights (solar) outside gives quite some light all evening …so long as we’ve had a few hours of sun! I still think proper coal-fired energy is the least one can do for poor developing countries; this means so much in terms of health, and education.
I’m sure Kenyans would erect a pole rigged with a block to raise the rocks up high enough to give them an evenings worth. Twenty minutes isn’t much of a span.
It could have some use I suppose, but it is a bit of a Luddite idea. The feel-good thought that lefty, well-off, white sustainability types are doing something wonderful for Third World unfortunates by giving them dull lights powered by their own labor is a product of an insidious, subtle form of racism that the perpetrators are unaware of. It is built into their world view and out of sight, yet it is part of almost everything they think or do.
Back in the 1960s, following independence of Nigeria I was puzzled, but only for a little while, when a Nigerian newspaperman said to me “Why is it that Bature (whites) can’t understand that an African can take a handout from them with one hand and smack them in the face with the other?” After being in the country for a while and seeing the missionary ladies in white ankle socks and sensible shoes doing God’swork with the heathens and the “Aid” communities’ patriarchal condescension, I came to see the journalist’s point. The same thing imbues the new world order types view of the world and that’s what pi55ed off middle America in the election and middle UK in Brexit.
Right on, Gary!
Okay, lots of deservedly snarky comments but no one has done the math. So here it is:
At a luminous efficiency of 208 lm/W, and an out put of 0.085 watts, the light gives 17.7 lumens. And at 5000 K, which is very blue, which makes it dim to the eye.
A check in my linen closet found a 60 watt incandescent bulb that puts out over 850 lumens at about 2800 K (called “warm white”)
So it would take 48 of these gravity lights to give the equivalent light of one 60 watt incandescent bulb.
One LED bulb found at Lowes on the internet, sold as 60 watt equivalent, puts out 800 lumens at 2700 K, and uses 9 watts.
From wikipedia:
“Flat wick-type lamps have the lowest light output, Center Draft round wick lamps have 3 – 4 times the output of flat wick lamps and pressurized lamps have higher output yet ; the range is from 8 to 100 lumens. A kerosene lamp producing 37 lumens for 4 hours per day will consume about 3 litres of kerosene per month.”
Who needs engineers 🙂
re “Flat wick-type lamps have the lowest light output, Center Draft round wick lamps have 3 – 4 times the output of flat wick lamps and pressurized lamps have higher output yet ; the range is from 8 to 100 lumens. A kerosene lamp producing 37 lumens for 4 hours per day will consume about 3 litres of kerosene per month.”
As a kid on a post WW2 Soldier Settlement block in rural Australia, I remember well our progression from the flat wick lamps to mantle lamps and eventually the pressurised lamps (all bought secondhand) which seemed to match the increase in amount and complexity of school homework as we progressed from primary to secondary school when fortunately electricity became available.
I’ve never experienced life in Africa and I have certainly never experienced extreme poverty – at least after my college years. But Wikipedia left out one major category of kerosene lamps; round wick, unpressurized, incandescent mantle lamps. I have five Alladin Mantle kerosene lamps. The oldest is approaching the century mark and the newest is around 20 years old. Parts and components for all of them are still available. They all work well and I use them whenever the grid goes down due to weather. I also use them just for the warmth and gentle quality of their light, supposedly the closest to natural light. Their design eliminates any objectionable kerosene fumes except when they are first lit or extinguished. Their output is the equivalent of a 40-60 watt incandescent electric light and they normally give me 12 hours of light per quart of kero. Yes, flat wick kerosene lamps are very inefficient, producing little illumination with their incomplete combustion but properly designed lamps utilizing complete combustion and incandescent mantles are safe and effective.
5000 K does not make light appear dim to the eye. For one thing, the lumen is a photometric unit rather than a radiometric one – the lumen is defined in terms of photopic reception by the “standard human eyeball” as defined by CIE. For that matter, how human eyes deviate from “standard photopic vision” in dim light conditions makes them more sensitive to wavelengths from mid-green to greenish-blue.
Another thing to consider: Peak wavelength of a 5000 K blackbody, as determined by amount of radiometric content per unit nm of bandwidth, using the blackbody formula, or simplified using Wien’s displacement constant: 579.5 nm to the nearest .5 nm, 579.6 nm to the nearest .1 nm. This is yellow.
The temperature of a blackbody radiator that maximizes its luminous efficiency (according to the CIE photopic function) is about 6600 K. The peak wavelength of that is somewhat bluish, but lowering the temperature increases the percentage of spectral output being in infrared more than it decreases the percentage of spectral output being in ultraviolet due mostly to broadening the bandwidth in wavelength terms.
“This is yellow.” and quite close to the sun at 5770K, which is indeed yellow
5000K light sucks. Everything has this weird bluish hue. Feels like everyone is a zombie, (if zombies were blue, that is).
This is my very (un)scientific observation.
Who, among the smarmy scoffers, here has ever done anything to improve the lot of the world’s poorest? We all understand that this a lo-tech, non-starter in our world, but if a 9 yr. old Kenyan child is helped to learn to read by such a simple device, it’s in very poor taste to condemn it for lack of sophistication. Please, people, think before commenting. Other people are watching this site.
+1 We need to encourage technology transfer to those that lack it. Whether they embrace it or not is their choice…. but I don’t see that they would not no matter how simplistic.
This is not technology transfer, how do the Kenyan’s repair the darn things if they break? It is simply a feel-good response from some over-educated idiot. They would have done much better to promote the building of coal fired electricity generators & an electrical grid in rural Kenya.
The best thing to improve the lot of the third world would be access to cheap fossil fuels and small single cylinder diesel engines… With that you can run small agricultural plants, fishing boats, businesses. You can run refrigeration, freezer plants, generate electricity, us as PTO’s for all manner of agricultural work, engines for fishing boats and commerce…. etc.
This light is rubbish…. A 5kva 240v generator or 24 volt/240volt inverter system driven by a 8 hp diesel engine would be a lot more practical for a family farm.
And using a weight that requires resetting every 20minutes or so, instead of getting cheap large scale power to the poor helps them nearly zip.
The technology of the Grand Father clock incorporated into a light…. So we’re going back to the 1600’s.
So what comes next? The reinvention of the wheel or the lever?
Windmills?