Gravity Lamp Grabs Green Prize 596
eldavojohn writes "A lamp powered by gravity has won the second prize at the Greener Gadgets Conference in NYC. From the article, "The light output will be 600-800 lumens — roughly equal to a 40-watt incandescent bulb over a period of four hours. To "turn on" the lamp, the user moves weights from the bottom to the top of the lamp. An hour glass-like mechanism is turned over and the weights are placed in the mass sled near the top of the lamp. The sled begins its gentle glide back down and, within a few seconds, the LEDs come on and light the lamp ... Moulton estimates that Gravia's mechanisms will last more than 200 years, if used eight hours a day, 365 days a year." The article contains links to the patents and the designer/inventor Clay Moulton's site." I think my laptop would require a slightly larger weight to pull this off.
Re:Looks cool... (Score:5, Interesting)
However, one thing concerns me. The weights are moved up to the top by human power, which is fine, but according to the picture on the designer's website, the weights are 5 10 pound weights in each lamp, so either I'm having to lift 10 pounds 5 times every time I want to light the lamp, or I'm lifting 50 pounds. Perhaps he could incorporate some sort of foot pedal mechanism or something to more easily lift the weights. If he could figure out how to do that, and also maybe improve the efficiency a little more to get more than the 40-watt equivalent it gets now, I could see this becoming a solid replacement for traditional lamps.
Re:Looks cool... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And it runs for four hours, too. (Score:3, Interesting)
The maths just don't check out, however. There is no way to produce that much light for four hours with anything less than a ton or so of weight.
Next step ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Looks cool... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:But who is going to control (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmmm. What else falls around the house? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Where does the energy come from? (Score:1, Interesting)
Without looking too deeply into the design of this lamp, I'm assuming that the weights take hours to drop, something like a grandfather clock's. A lot more energy would be absorbed than if the weights dropped freefall.
(I could be completely wrong here)
One Design Improvement (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a thought.
Re:Home Gym.. (Score:3, Interesting)
that's 4 reps to get the weights that high if attached to a ratcheting system. properly constructed, I bet I could get most of the electricity for my daily lighting by doing a fairly vigorous workout every day. It'll never happen, but only because of the weird stuff you'd have to have installed. I can picture it now - a huge stack of weights, lifted to the top of my house, 10 to 200lbs at a time, in 18" increments, the sounds ratcheting sounds echoing across the neighborhood. over the course of the day, they slowly grind down to the basement or ground floor. Run out too early? do another set! You've been meaning to tone those arms for a while now anyway, right?
Re:It can't possibly work either (Score:4, Interesting)
White LEDS are currently ~65 lm/W and will possibly soon be 150 lm/W http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#Operational_parameters_and_efficiency [wikipedia.org] so there is approx factor of 10 improved efficiency, so if the lamp can achieve 4W output he can match the 40W incandescent output. Even so this would require 57600J over 4 hours, which from a potential energy release from 1m would required a weight of 5000kg, so I think he fucked up his calculations or got a bit carried away.
Still, don't let science get in the way of art!
Re:It can't possibly work either (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Looks cool... (Score:3, Interesting)
Then you just lay it on the floor, and stand it back up again on the opposite end.
I guess maybe the rotors can only gear one way or something.
Why not use a spring? (Score:3, Interesting)
LED technology (Score:3, Interesting)
Since this particular lamp emits too much blue, I would wager that it uses a blue indium-gallium-nitride LED.
Increasing the phosphorous coating would make the resulting color more yellow and thus negate any need to wait 15 years.
The most commonly used phosphorous emits in the 580nm range (yellow), while the blue diode itself emits light at around 470nm (blue, surprisingly).
Re:Home Gym.. (Score:3, Interesting)
The real issue is that so much power is wasted. A lot of energy is just dissipated for no reason around your home. That energy could be harnessed somewhat inefficiently but still cheaply and if it were done over time and as a matter of course the actual cost would be minimal. Of course, so would the benefits, but we all know such things add up.
I've heard about several households where a crap TV was hooked up to a bicycle-powered generator. Oh sure, the TV probably dies an early death due to brownouts, but the point is, kids in the house couldn't watch TV unless one of them was pedaling. So obviously you get enough power out of a bicycle to do work, if not useful work :)
If you can run a TV, you can certainly run a laptop. My Core Duo with a 17" widescreen peaks at 90W.
If you use the energy immediately (i.e. reducing grid use, not replacing it) then you can get every watt-hour of energy produced out of the system and actually use it. If you lived off-grid and you had a well-insulated peltier cooler-based fridge, an energy-efficient laptop, and a few LED lights, plus a composting, methane-producing toilet for handling waste and producing cooking gas, a small family could produce all the energy they needed from their food (and more!) and still have entertainment.
Of course, dropping $500 on a homebuilt wind generator and some electronics to go with it would probably do the job, too.
You are way, way off (Score:2, Interesting)
W = ( N * m ) / s
N = kg * ( m / s^2 )
N = 22.6 * 9.8 = 221.48
W = ( 221.48 * 1.47 ) / 240
W = 1.353
I also don't know WTF you're talking about 150 lumens / watt. Many white LEDs output 300 and up lumens / watt.
In short this is totally doable.
Re:Looks cool... (Score:5, Interesting)
Set the stand on the floor, it has an arm that goes up to 50% of the height of the lamp and attaches to the back of the lamp. The lamp would be supported by the stand and wouldn't actually touch the floor. When the weight reaches the bottom, simply flip the lamp over by applying force to the upper portion. You could add in little catch or ratchet points so it would be easy to do.
What about the FIRST prize winner... (Score:3, Interesting)
The first prize winner seems MUCH more interesting: An open-source design for an energy meter.
See here [core77.com]
Basically, he's gonna provide the design specs to build your own kill-a-watt [p3international.com]
So, it's:
And no interest whatsoever on Slashdot? WTF?
Re:It can't possibly work either (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it was Popular Science (maybe Popular Mechanics) that had a safety product design contest after 9/11. One of the winning entries was a device the size of a tube of lipstick that was supposed to contain an absurd amount of compressed oxygen - something like 30 minutes worth - to help the user escape from a burning building. If only firefighters knew about this magic technology - they wouldn't have to lug around those bulky SCBA tanks anymore! Us SCUBA divers would be quite interested, too. An 8-inch long 'spare air' cylinder holds a whopping 1.7 cubic feet - something like 60 breaths.
I don't remember *any* of those winning designs being practical. The closest was a system for firefighters that would provide personnel tracking and 3D maps of buildings - no mention of who was supposed to gather that data for thousands of buildings and keep it up to date, though. Maybe someone can provide a link to the article.
For a magazine, it's understandable, if a bit insulting. For a university, it's kind of pathetic. If our education system was working, ANY high school graduate ought to be able to show how this lamp (or the oxygen cylinder) is totally unworkable, or at least realize that the numbers are off by a couple of orders of magnitude or more.
Re:It can't possibly work either (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Looks cool... (Score:3, Interesting)
Small Correction (Score:4, Interesting)