Green Health Live Show - Let there be LED

Alright, so it's done. Jeff did a great job at the Green Health Live interview.

Here's the link to the blog on The GHL site. Marc did a good job of writing an overview of how LED's work using the images that we gave him for the show. Check it out.
http://thestream.tv/blog/?p=379

Here's the link to the video.
http://www.thestream.tv/watch.php?v=560

I don't quite agree with Jeff's fashion choice (I mean who wears cyan dress shirts, really?) but that didn't deter from his knowledge of the product. There was another 45 minutes of Q&A afterwards with some interesting questions, but unfortunately, that didn't get aired.

The best question that someone wrote in was "So what happens when the bulbs explode?!" The look on Jeff's face was classic. It was a cross between "Is that a real question?" and "Uhh....is anybody screening these submissions?"

The answer to that, is that LED bulbs DON'T explode. They are solid state electronics (kind of like a USB drive), meaning it's just a chip. The newer bulbs casings are made mostly from aluminum (rather than polycarbonate, a stiff plastic) which are used as a heatsink to dissipate the heat produced from the high intensity LED chips. Compact fluorescents are glass tubes that have an argon gas (or sometimes krypton gas) and a little bit of mercury inside. The old style and office fluorescents had a separate block of electronics called a ballast that's meant to "jumpstart" the lighting process. The compact fluorescents have a mini-ballast inside the base of the bulb to do this. I haven't heard of these lights exploding either, but I have heard stories of these burning out, especially when you turn the lights on and off rapidly. Apparently doing that will greatly decrease the life of a CFL. Luckily, LEDs don't have this problem. And of course you definitely don't want to be in the vicinity of a broken CFL or fluorescent due to the small mercury issue. (Just kidding, it's not a small issue...click here for the cleanup instructions.)

Incandescents and halogens are both glass "globes" that contain a metal filament that heats up to an extreme temperature, which creates light. The bulb contains no gas, but actually contains a vacuum, so the filament is less prone to oxidation from the air (and thus burning out more quickly). As you can imagine, this high heat is transferred to the thin glass bulb and dissapated through the air. Halogens are a bit more efficient that incandescents (more light for the same wattage) but they both get hot enough to burn you (and start various curtain/paper/fabric fires) if you touch them.

I remember back in my younger years, we had one of lamps with a lampshade. Nothing special, just the typical run-of-the-mill table lamps. I had one of those mist bottles, the kind you use for Windex, but it was filled with water for ironing clothes. In my infinite wisdom, I knew that such a fine mist would evaporate quickly from warm surfaces, so I thought it would be fun to see the water turn quickly into steam by spraying it on a hot light bulb. Bad idea. I was (and still am) a little scientist and thought I knew what I was doing, it seemed so simple in my head. In the same way that glass cracks when heated up and dunked in water, the light bulb did the same. Except being under pressure and being so thin, instead of cracking, it EXPLODED. Bulb shards everywhere. Luckily the lampshade was still on, which shielded me from flying slivers of broken glass to the face, or you'd be probably be calling me Patches right now. What happens is that the glass on the outside contracts due to the cooler temperature, while the glass on the inside of the bulb doesn't. This non-uniform stretching causes stress in the glass, and ultimately rupture.

I can't believe I actually made it to my age in one piece when I think about all the dumb things I did as a kid. Retrospectively of course. At the time, it was pure genius...

Jeff's Interview Tonight @ Green Health Live

Tonight at 6PM PST, Jeff is doing an interview with Mark Ryan at Green Health Live. The URL you can see him at, AND participate with questions to ask him are :

LIVE STREAM:
http://www.thestream.tv/series.php?s=11
WEBSITE:
http://www.greenhealthlive.tv/

Green Health Live is an online talk show (which is part of a larger video and entertainment site) that does weekly segments on how to live greener and educate people on green issues that they may not be aware of. I watched a few episodes (The Fish and Recycling episodes are good) and I like the style that they use, it's not preachy or boring (as content like that *could* be in another person's hands) and actually makes it fun to learn about how to do your part for the environment. It caters towards the general public which is really nice, especially if you don't know a lot of the acronyms or technologies that are just thrown around nowadays. Personally, in this age of fast-food entertainment, if you lose my attention or go over my head for even a second, my hand is already on the back button to see the newest Youtube viral video.

Of the episodes that I saw, Mark kept it interesting with his funny quips and comments, and co-host Carrie is a good bastion of knowledge on the medical aspect of each show. I think just the fact that he sports a faux-hawk while talking and interviewing guests is entertainment enough, but then again, I just have a natural predilection towards mohawks. Jeff will talking a little bit about the industry/business, but the focus of the interview will be on more informational topics such as

• What LED stands for and how it works
• Comparing and contrasting with conventional incandscent bulbs and fluorescent lights
• Environmental impact and health implications of each
• Cost and savings of LED technology
• Interesting stories and thoughts

It should be interesting to see how well Jeff does, and if anything, this will be a great resource for people that want to find out about or want a general introduction about LEDs. I'll be posting the video up after it's finished tonight. Stay tuned! Or better yet, watch the show and submit a question!

Death and Taxes.....and Carbon Dioxide!

You can now add one more addenum to Ben Franklin's famous phrase because the scientists at Stanford just came out with a paper directly linking rising carbon dioxide emissions to rising human mortality rates. Now before you knock me off my soapbox with an anti-sensationalist 2x4, this study has many implications. It's not as much a correlation as it is a cause-and-effect relationship, which as we scientists know, is a much stronger case against it.

Now that there is scientific proof (which is the best kind of proof), then we now a a concrete reason to enact laws to regulate CO2 emissions. The easiest way to tighten the proverbial belt is to regulate these emissions by limiting exhaust concentrations in automobiles. The hard way to do it would be to also regulate coal burning power plants, but then where would we get our energy from? I guess the point I'm trying to make is that nowadays in this fast-food eating, Starbucks-fueled, whatever-I-want-I-get utopia that we live in, we're always looking for the quick fix. Sure, reducing CO2 from cars is great, but like the standard light bulb you have in your home, you're talking about a more than century old technology here. There's only so much spit-shine you can put on the hubcaps of that Model T to make it go faster before you start rubbing off the chrome.

I say rather than curtailing old tech, take the time to introduce new technology that has the ability to save the world from itself. It's the new ideas, whether it be new ways to MAKE energy (solar, wind, water) or new ways to SAVE energy (LEDs, flourescents) that will pull us through this century. the technology may not be perfect right now, but when is it ever perfect on the first (or fifth) iteration? Invest in the now. I want to live as long as I can. If only to be able to buy the 15th generation iPhone that plugs directly into your brain....

via [Wired]

Saving Energy for the New Year

The giant 10,000 LED ball officially dropped in Times Square to usher in 2008, and I'm sure there was no lack of sound bites (or wonderment) on how amazing the ball looked.

For probably an entire minute (and via multiple replays on various channels all over the world), everyone's eyes were locked onto what will become the future of lighting. And was there an any more spectacular sight at that moment as we all counted down to midnight and made our new years resolution, while thinking to ourselves "This year will be the best one yet!"

I want to be the first one to proclaim that 2008 will be "The Year of the LED". From an early present from the U.S. government to sign the energy bill that will ban incandescents, to new innovations in LED light efficiency, we are slowly making the changes we need to extract ourselves from the dependency of energy. But that change will happen much faster if we can educate people on things that they can do to help themselves as well. The question that really needs to be answered is "What's in it for me?"I personally want to save the watts that I use on lighting to power my new Intel Core2Duo desktop and my Wii that I got for Christmas! That's a far cry from the Atari 2600 and Speak & Spell that was all the rage over two decades ago. I wonder how much energy those consoles used up...