Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Hey there, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, I get
Speaker 1: shattered like a lightbulb in an October moon. And I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick. So today we decided
Speaker 1: we would talk about something that's very important to us
Speaker 1: and really to most people on Earth. Yeah, and that's light. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we actually had a brilliant idea. Oh, light bulb went
Speaker 1: off overhead, and we decided, let's talk about the future
Speaker 1: of light and light bulbs. Kind of a focus on
Speaker 1: light bulbs, but well, we have to get to light bulbs.
Speaker 1: But well we can talk about the future. Really, what
Speaker 1: we mean is focusing on artificial light. Yeah, not just
Speaker 1: light that we can get by waiting around till the
Speaker 1: sun comes up, right, because artificial light is far more
Speaker 1: important and revolutionary to our lives then we often give
Speaker 1: it credit for. I mean, think about all of the
Speaker 1: ways your life would be different if we didn't have
Speaker 1: artificial light. You could only see what was going on
Speaker 1: in the daytime. I would have to make wake up
Speaker 1: much earlier in the morning. Yeah, I would. I would
Speaker 1: have stubbed all of my toes off by now, as
Speaker 1: I just wandered blindly through my house. Yeah, I do
Speaker 1: that with lights, so I just wouldn't have toes anymore. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm of the opinion that the story of artificial light
Speaker 1: is actually one of the most interesting questions we have
Speaker 1: in how humans have co evolved with our technology. Just
Speaker 1: think about the way artificial lighting has changed the way
Speaker 1: humans live and sleep. I mean, number one, it allows
Speaker 1: us to live in places that don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of natural lights, so we can adapt to a much
Speaker 1: more indoor lifestyle. Another thing is that, I know some
Speaker 1: scientists think that humans used to have different sleep patterns
Speaker 1: and we largely have now that back back in the
Speaker 1: days before artificial lighting, bi phasic sleep was very common,
Speaker 1: where you would sleep twice a day in shorter little
Speaker 1: blocks instead of one long sleep at night. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you would actually spend that time between the sleeps doing
Speaker 1: you know, various things you might be doing, you know,
Speaker 1: actual social visits for example. Right. But as artificial lighting
Speaker 1: indoor lighting became much more common and cheaper and more widespread,
Speaker 1: that just kind of faded away, and now in most
Speaker 1: of the world, it's very common to sleep in just
Speaker 1: one big chunk. Or think about all the ways that
Speaker 1: artificial lighting has made learning easier. Imagine if you weren't
Speaker 1: able to read except like outside in the daytime. Or
Speaker 1: think about all of the other human inventions that would
Speaker 1: be absolutely useless without artificial light. I mean not not
Speaker 1: even including all the ones that use light obviously, like
Speaker 1: we couldn't have our computer screen things like that, yeah,
Speaker 1: if they didn't emit light for us to see. But
Speaker 1: we couldn't have a submarine without artificial light. It's it's
Speaker 1: absolutely fundamental, it's crucial, it's a it's a bedrock of
Speaker 1: all the other technology that we use in our lives.
Speaker 1: I would not be excited about driving a car past dusk, right,
Speaker 1: Oh exactly, Yeah, he didn't have headlights. Yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: almost ridiculous to try to imagine the world we live
Speaker 1: in without it, and yet it gets no credit. We
Speaker 1: we don't really think to be thankful for artificial light
Speaker 1: very often. It was a big climb to get to
Speaker 1: having artificial light that's as good and as cheap and
Speaker 1: as plentiful as it is today. And it makes me
Speaker 1: wonder what the future is for being able to see
Speaker 1: things artificial light. Yeah, so today we wanted to kind
Speaker 1: of dive into the history of how people have create
Speaker 1: at light and then talk about some of the ways
Speaker 1: that it's that it is going in the future and
Speaker 1: technologies that are up and coming that we're excited about. Yea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we obviously had some source of artificial light, even
Speaker 1: if it was pretty crude and not awesome, but we
Speaker 1: had some source as soon as we had fire, Bernie,
Speaker 1: as you may you may refer to. So, yeah, it
Speaker 1: probably wasn't that long after humans discovered fire that they
Speaker 1: started to figure out ways of transporting that fire and
Speaker 1: keeping that fire burning so that they could use as
Speaker 1: a light source. Um. And thus we get to one
Speaker 1: of the earliest forms, the oil lamp. So tell me
Speaker 1: about oil lamps, Jonathan. All Right, So let's say that
Speaker 1: you first you gotta find some form of vessel doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be artificial. You could actually find like maybe
Speaker 1: a shell or a rock that has a kind of
Speaker 1: a hollow a concave area in it, and then you
Speaker 1: put some form of flammable material, let's say moss in it,
Speaker 1: and you then you soak that moss actually in animal fat,
Speaker 1: which would be the oil in this case, and you
Speaker 1: light the fire. The oil and moss together work is
Speaker 1: fuel so that the fire remains lit. You can actually
Speaker 1: move the rock around so that you can carry the
Speaker 1: fire with you. And this is the example of an
Speaker 1: oil lamp. Uh. These date back thousands of years before
Speaker 1: written history. We have found examples of oil lamps. So
Speaker 1: so to like, if you're just not done with your
Speaker 1: cave painting and you really want to get it done tonight,
Speaker 1: you can. Or or if you've gone on one of
Speaker 1: those amazing cave painting wine tours with your fellow cave
Speaker 1: painters and you're going cave to cave and it's getting laid,
Speaker 1: you know, you've got to still be able to see
Speaker 1: before you. You know, you don't want to skip the
Speaker 1: last cave that was the best one. I think, to
Speaker 1: be fair, wine was a little bit after these oil lams.
Speaker 1: I'm w h any The pains were notorious complainers. Another
Speaker 1: thing I'm not so sure about that. We could look
Speaker 1: it up, but I think humans have had alcohol for
Speaker 1: a long long time. But you know, you bring up
Speaker 1: cave paintings, that's another thing. You know, if you don't
Speaker 1: have some source of light that you can carry around
Speaker 1: with you. How do you think these deep internal cave
Speaker 1: paintings were done when people have to be able to
Speaker 1: see their work. Yeah, exactly. So you know what's interesting
Speaker 1: to me is that the oil lamp stuck around from
Speaker 1: prehistory for a really long time. We're talking about seeing
Speaker 1: improvements to the oil lamp made in the eighteen century,
Speaker 1: so so thousands of years here, and that's when I'm
Speaker 1: the are Gone invented a lamp that was more efficient
Speaker 1: and then it consume more of the wick and the oil,
Speaker 1: which meant that you didn't have to trim the wick
Speaker 1: away like the burning wick. Once it was essentially turned
Speaker 1: into carbon, you need to remove it. Um So this
Speaker 1: would be the way of where it was more of
Speaker 1: it was being consumed, so you wouldn't have to trim
Speaker 1: as frequently. Uh So that was a big improvement. But
Speaker 1: oil lamps were eventually replaced it by kerosene lamps in
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties. Uh nine thousand years ago is when
Speaker 1: we started having wine maybe right, Okay, I was about
Speaker 1: to say, like, when did we start having wine in
Speaker 1: the office. It's kind of awesome. Uh So, but we
Speaker 1: as humans, I got it. But oil lamps were replaced
Speaker 1: by kerosene lamps eighteen fifties, which uses obviously kerosene as
Speaker 1: a fuel and a wick or mantle as the means
Speaker 1: of having the flame. Uh, then we also have gas lamps.
Speaker 1: Now this is kind of interesting. So oil lamps and
Speaker 1: kerosene lamps neither of those were necessarily good for lighting
Speaker 1: something like a street. These were usually small lamps that
Speaker 1: were good to carry around. Like if you ever see
Speaker 1: depictions of a character carrying a small flame lantern around,
Speaker 1: that's probably either an oil lamp or a kerosene lamp.
Speaker 1: But gas lamps used coal gas as fuel, and the
Speaker 1: earliest example I could find dates from sevent two, so
Speaker 1: actually pre dates kerosene lamps. That was when William Murdoch
Speaker 1: used coal gas to light his home as an experiment.
Speaker 1: I guess if you are convinced that your idea is
Speaker 1: gonna work, outfitting your own home with something that could
Speaker 1: potentially kill you is the way to go. So did
Speaker 1: William Murdoch live long enough to be recognized for his achievement?
Speaker 1: He did. He actually eventually outfitted his workplace, which was
Speaker 1: the Soho Foundry, with gas lamps and by the early
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, gas lamps would start to become installed in
Speaker 1: several cities in Europe. Baltimore became the first city in
Speaker 1: the United States to have gas lamps, and there are
Speaker 1: other areas other cities in the US that still have
Speaker 1: some gas lamp districts where either the gas lamps were
Speaker 1: rebuilt or preserved um like San Diego as an amazing
Speaker 1: gas lamp district. Uh and gas lamps remained the main
Speaker 1: method of lighting streets and homes until the twentieth century,
Speaker 1: so it stuck around for a good while. But somewhere
Speaker 1: in the meanwhile, all this time, we've been talking about
Speaker 1: burning stuff to create light. What what about this new
Speaker 1: fangled electricity idea that was starting to hit the scene. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people experimenting with it as
Speaker 1: soon as you got volta with a voltaic pile. Once.
Speaker 1: Once that discovery was made, everyone was wondering if there
Speaker 1: could be really cool uses for this discovery. One of
Speaker 1: those people was a British inventor, Humphrey Davy, who in
Speaker 1: eighteen o two connected pair of voltaic piles to pair
Speaker 1: of the charcoal electrodes and an arc of light emitted
Speaker 1: between the two carbon rods. Now, it was not a
Speaker 1: practical source of artificial light because one, it was way
Speaker 1: too bright. You could not use it to light a home.
Speaker 1: It would just be too uncomfortable. The light would be
Speaker 1: too intense. The second problem was it consumed those carbon
Speaker 1: rods very quickly, so before long you would not be
Speaker 1: able to generate light at all. So first it would
Speaker 1: be too much light, and then it'll be no light.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like trying to light your home
Speaker 1: with a sparkler. Yeah, not not a great not a
Speaker 1: great experience at least not if you're over the age
Speaker 1: of like ten. So uh. Eventually, Williams State would make
Speaker 1: improvements to arc lamps in eighty eight, creating a clockwork
Speaker 1: mechanism that governed the movement of those carbon rods to
Speaker 1: maximize that fuel to consume as much of them as
Speaker 1: possible before the connection was lost. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: it would move the rods in relation to one another
Speaker 1: to try and keep the art going as long as
Speaker 1: it possibly could, and picturing something like a like a
Speaker 1: clockwork spit roast. For I'm not sure if that's what
Speaker 1: it looked like. I have not seen a picture, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to say you were accurate, and I could
Speaker 1: be uncertain of that. Uh So the problem was that
Speaker 1: State's invention was costly, so it didn't really take off either.
Speaker 1: But the the promise of using electricity as a source
Speaker 1: of light in some way remained. Well, when did we
Speaker 1: get the incandescent bulbs that we're also familiar with? That's
Speaker 1: a why did you ask me that question? That's a
Speaker 1: full episode right there, Joe. So incandescent bulbs. The the
Speaker 1: journey to the incandescent bulb was a very long one,
Speaker 1: starting all the way back with Humphrey Davy. But you
Speaker 1: have this progression of various inventors who all worked with
Speaker 1: electricity to try and figure out how to make something incandesce,
Speaker 1: which is all about heat. You heat up a material
Speaker 1: to a temperature high enough to make it glow. That
Speaker 1: is incandescence. That's what we mean when we say an
Speaker 1: incandescent bulb. We're talking about heating up a filament, some
Speaker 1: form of material to a temperature high enough where it
Speaker 1: will glow. It will get hot enough to glow at
Speaker 1: a incredible luminescence so that you can actually see by it.
Speaker 1: So we're talking super hot here, warm Yeah, if you've
Speaker 1: ever touched a light bulb after it had just been
Speaker 1: turned off, you know what I'm talking about. They can
Speaker 1: get super hot, um, and we're the ones we're using
Speaker 1: today are not as hot as some of the earlier
Speaker 1: ones any rate. Uh. The filament is consumed in this process.
Speaker 1: Right as you heat it up, it actually begins to
Speaker 1: essentially burn away. So that means eventually you get to
Speaker 1: a point where the filament is going to break somewhere
Speaker 1: along this connection because it's disintegrated enough. Yeah. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: essentially there's they're little breaks that that open up until
Speaker 1: there's no longer a connection, Like it just breaks in half,
Speaker 1: or maybe not in half, but somewhere along its length,
Speaker 1: and you have electrodes on either side. Well, now you
Speaker 1: no longer have a pathway for electricity to flow through.
Speaker 1: So that's when the light burns out. That's when you
Speaker 1: get the the dead bulb. If you ever have picked
Speaker 1: up an incandescent ballb after it's burned out and give
Speaker 1: it a little shake and you hear that little tingle tinging,
Speaker 1: that's the that's the broken filament inside just dancing around
Speaker 1: because it's not connected to anything anymore. Uh, so early
Speaker 1: incandescent bulbs were problematic because the filaments burned out at
Speaker 1: a very short time, and it took some time for
Speaker 1: people to figure out how to fix this. One of
Speaker 1: the big developments was, hey, we need to remove the
Speaker 1: filament from oxygen so that it doesn't burn. So that
Speaker 1: means we have to put it in some form of
Speaker 1: container and create a vacuum. So early lightbulbs were put
Speaker 1: in vacuum tubes, but vacuum tube technology was not very
Speaker 1: good in the early nineteenth century. It would not be
Speaker 1: until Thomas Edison came around. Thomas Haysen did not invent
Speaker 1: the lightbulb. No, he is often credited as the inventor
Speaker 1: of the light bulb. He did not. He invented essentially
Speaker 1: the first commercially viable lightbulb, the first one to remain
Speaker 1: working long enough for it to be an actual, you
Speaker 1: useful thing, right. Um So, he started experimenting with a
Speaker 1: couple of different types of filaments and eventually discovered that
Speaker 1: a carbon coated filament and an oxygen free glass bulb
Speaker 1: could last several hours like forty forty hours of light
Speaker 1: before burning out. Uh So, Edison was not the first
Speaker 1: one to make the use of the container free of oxygen.
Speaker 1: Like I said, the other people had other people had
Speaker 1: tried to make vacuum tubes, but Edison's approach was sort
Speaker 1: of the perfection of that art. Uh. The application of
Speaker 1: tungsten um was another big development in this light bulb process,
Speaker 1: tungsten being a metal that has a melting point of
Speaker 1: up to above six thousand degrees fahrenheit, which is something
Speaker 1: around a thirty degrees celsius. And that's high. That's high,
Speaker 1: y'all um. Lots of metals give off mostly heat a
Speaker 1: k A. Infrared photons um when they're electrified, but infrared
Speaker 1: light is invisible and therefore does not help us for
Speaker 1: light bulb purposes. Also, if you get most metals too hot,
Speaker 1: they'll just melt, which is not useful for light bulbs either.
Speaker 1: So uh, you can heat tongue though to a comfortable
Speaker 1: like like four thousand degrees fahrenheit or celsius, and it'll
Speaker 1: stay solid and emit lots of visible light. So when
Speaker 1: I was saying these things get hot, I was not
Speaker 1: kidding quite warm. Yeah, But the thing is that a
Speaker 1: plain old vacuum tube is not the best thing for
Speaker 1: tungsten because when when it heats up like that, it'll
Speaker 1: start shedding atoms that will eventually collect on the inside
Speaker 1: of the bulb, which will darken it over time, which
Speaker 1: again is not conducive to things what you want to
Speaker 1: make light for you. But different gases um in in
Speaker 1: in that vacuum tube, say inert gases, because you don't
Speaker 1: want gasses floating around. And there, yeah, have been different
Speaker 1: gases that are in nert have been experimented with nice
Speaker 1: and one of the things I want to mention also
Speaker 1: were helogen light bulbs. Do you guys have a lot
Speaker 1: of experience with halogen light bulbs, so I'm aware of
Speaker 1: them my house and my house has is crazy. My
Speaker 1: house was made with all these different types of light fixtures,
Speaker 1: no two of which appear to accept the same kind
Speaker 1: of light bulb. So you can imagine how I feel
Speaker 1: whenever a light bulb burns out, like I have to
Speaker 1: go through the closet of light bulbs to find the
Speaker 1: right one. Some of them are halogen light bulbs, so
Speaker 1: they also work through incandescence. They use a tungsten filament
Speaker 1: like Lauren was mentioning, so similar but inside a quartz envelope.
Speaker 1: That's filled with halogen gas. Now, the halogen gas combines
Speaker 1: with the tungsten vapor that's given off while the tungsten
Speaker 1: is incandessing. So while normally the filament would be kind
Speaker 1: of vaporizing away over time until it breaks and then
Speaker 1: your light bulb burns out, in a halogen bulb, it
Speaker 1: that that vapor combines with the halogen gas, and the
Speaker 1: halogen gas will redeposit tungsten on the filament, So it
Speaker 1: preserves the life of the filament. It extends it. It's
Speaker 1: not extended indefinitely. It will still burn out, but it
Speaker 1: does mean that the hall light bulb will remain viable
Speaker 1: longer because of this redepositing. That's so metal. It is
Speaker 1: so metal, so that those are the incandescent bulbs. Well,
Speaker 1: incandescent bulbs are a thing of the past, right, I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's they're more and more places on Earth
Speaker 1: where you are not even allowed to buy them anymore
Speaker 1: for energy efficiency purposes. That's great, though just esthetically it
Speaker 1: is a little sad. I like the globe and incandescent bulb, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are. They do have a very kind of warm
Speaker 1: glow to the understandably exactly so that they don't live
Speaker 1: as long, and they don't they're not great at energy efficiency. Alright, no,
Speaker 1: they're not more what's better. Well, next, we've got the
Speaker 1: fluorescent bulbs, which have their own issues, but fluoresce and
Speaker 1: bulbs work in a different way. So fluoresce and bulb
Speaker 1: contains a pair of electrodes. So that's similar to an
Speaker 1: incandescent bulb, but instead of you don't have a filament
Speaker 1: in this case, right, you just have you have a
Speaker 1: gas filament. I guess it's not a physical it's not
Speaker 1: like an actual solid filament. I should say is physical?
Speaker 1: Is just gas. So these pair of electrodes. You also
Speaker 1: have some mercury. Uh not freddie mercury, which would be facoless. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't don't stuff him into vacuum tubes. That's not no, no, uh,
Speaker 1: he's your best friend. So you've got the bit of mercury.
Speaker 1: You've got an inert gas usually are gone, and a
Speaker 1: phosphor powder coating on the inside of the glass. So
Speaker 1: when you turn on a fluorescent lamp, current flows to
Speaker 1: the electrodes. All right. That creates a difference of voltage
Speaker 1: across the two electrodes, and the electron movement excites the mercury.
Speaker 1: Some of that mercury changes from liquid, which is what
Speaker 1: mercury tends to be in room temperature, to a gas.
Speaker 1: So you get collisions between the electrons coming through the
Speaker 1: electrodes uh and the charged particles with the mercury gas atoms.
Speaker 1: That bumps up the electrons to a higher energy level,
Speaker 1: which is how any kind of photon is created. Exactly.
Speaker 1: It's when when an electron returns to its normal energy
Speaker 1: state and being yeah, it has to give off that
Speaker 1: excess energy. Right, So if I if I excite an electron,
Speaker 1: if I energize an electron, so it bumps up to
Speaker 1: a higher energy level and then I stop, Well, then
Speaker 1: the electron is going to return to its normal state
Speaker 1: parties over. Yeah, but then it's like, well, I can't
Speaker 1: carry all this extra energy with me. I gotta get
Speaker 1: rid of it, so it emits it in the form
Speaker 1: of a photon, which is the basic particle of light. However,
Speaker 1: in this case, we're talking about photons and the ultra
Speaker 1: violet range, which means that you and I can't see them,
Speaker 1: and that is where that phosphor cutting comes in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because in this case, the phosphor coating. What it can
Speaker 1: do is absorbed that ultra violet radiation. It has the
Speaker 1: same sort of uh process where the electrons in the
Speaker 1: fosphor coading get excited. They're like, oh, ultra violet awesome,
Speaker 1: they jump up and then return to normal, but they
Speaker 1: emit light within the visible spectrum. So it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like it's like a step by step process of
Speaker 1: trying to get light from the visible light from this
Speaker 1: from this approach. And that's exactly how these things work.
Speaker 1: So it's pretty cool. Um, literally, much cooler. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't involve in condessing. Of course, now we live in
Speaker 1: the age of the L E ED bol yes, and
Speaker 1: this is kind of a game changer in a way. Yeah, so,
Speaker 1: I mean L E d s also still have a
Speaker 1: lot of challenges, but I'll cover that in a second.
Speaker 1: Light emitting diodes also, that's what LED stands for, and
Speaker 1: they are taught type of solid state lighting or s
Speaker 1: s L. So solid state sounds pretty cool. You're like,
Speaker 1: all right, so how does this thing work? Well, we
Speaker 1: have to talk about semi conductors again. I know, I'm sorry. No,
Speaker 1: we love talking about semi conductors. I love talking about them.
Speaker 1: I wish I had a truly deep understanding of them.
Speaker 1: I have a basic level understanding of semi conductor technology,
Speaker 1: maybe a little beyond basic, But I always every time
Speaker 1: I go into this, I'm always like, am I explaining
Speaker 1: this correctly? So with semiconductors you have You're doing great,
Speaker 1: thank you. You have positively charged sections, negatively charged sections.
Speaker 1: So the negatively charged area of the semiconductor has an
Speaker 1: excess of electrons. That's what creates the negative charge. Right,
Speaker 1: the positively charged section we call uh we say that
Speaker 1: it has holes. In other words, it has the capacity
Speaker 1: to accept electrons. Okay, so it has the ability to
Speaker 1: create a flow from one side to the other. Yeah. You.
Speaker 1: It essentially says, hey, you know, if you got electron
Speaker 1: sent them on over because I got some space, dude,
Speaker 1: I mean like we can totally crash over here. I
Speaker 1: need a roomy rent is high. You know. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like living in San Francisco. So in this case,
Speaker 1: you also have an area in between the two where
Speaker 1: you it's a mixture kind of. You have the holes
Speaker 1: and you have electrons. The electrons fill the first adjacent
Speaker 1: line of holes, and unless you give more energy to
Speaker 1: the negative side. UH, it reaches a level of equilibrium
Speaker 1: where there's kind of a barrier between the the pete
Speaker 1: hype that's the positive side, and the N type that's
Speaker 1: the negative side UH material in the semiconductor, and that
Speaker 1: area in between is called the depletion zone, which I
Speaker 1: like to think is where you send Superman villains if
Speaker 1: the negative zone fills up. UM. So when you introduce
Speaker 1: electricity to the semiconductor on the inside of the material,
Speaker 1: the electrons are pushed from the negative side to the
Speaker 1: positive side. They can overcome the depletion zone. Now when
Speaker 1: they get to the positive side, they enter the holes.
Speaker 1: The holes are at a lower energy level than the
Speaker 1: electrons the excited electrons are, so the electrons move into
Speaker 1: the holes, they emit that excess of energy in the
Speaker 1: form of a photon, just as we were talking about
Speaker 1: with the fluorescent bulbs, and thus you get light. And
Speaker 1: this flow, by the way, only works in one direction. Diodes,
Speaker 1: that's a very important electronic component, and that's the that's
Speaker 1: one of the cool things about them. They allow electricity
Speaker 1: to flow in one direction, but not the their way,
Speaker 1: and it has to go from ND type to P
Speaker 1: type because it's you know, you can't you can't make uh,
Speaker 1: negatively charged particles go into a negatively charged area because
Speaker 1: the light charges are going to not not without a
Speaker 1: lot of effort. You've gotta push really hard. So, now
Speaker 1: that we've sort of looked at where we've gotten to,
Speaker 1: what we've sort of caught up with what modern technology
Speaker 1: has to offer in lighting, what does the future hold?
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things we can look at
Speaker 1: is just the the efficiency of electrical light bulbs. They've
Speaker 1: come a long way, right sure, Yeah, Like like why
Speaker 1: we're addressing this question at all? You know, like we
Speaker 1: have a lot of things that work right now, but
Speaker 1: how well do they work? Right? While wiring incandescent bulbs
Speaker 1: considered to be awful, when why are these other ones
Speaker 1: considered to be great. Here's one experiment you can try. Actually,
Speaker 1: don't try this because you might burn yourself. Okay, go
Speaker 1: up to an old incandescent bulb while it's on and
Speaker 1: touch it. Don't do this. It can get really telling
Speaker 1: me to do something and then not to do it. No,
Speaker 1: don't do this because you can burn your hand. It
Speaker 1: can get really hot. What what is heat? Heat is waste?
Speaker 1: He does is wasted energy. Right, it means that you
Speaker 1: are you are pouring all this electricity and to generate
Speaker 1: the heat, which in turn generates the light. But that's
Speaker 1: that means that if there are alternatives where you don't
Speaker 1: have to heat up a material to this incredible temperature
Speaker 1: in order to get the light, then maybe you could
Speaker 1: be more efficient. You're you're you're wasting photons in that
Speaker 1: infrared zone, which unless you're Georgy LaForge you cannot see. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So ideally what you would want is is some kind
Speaker 1: of thank you, thank you, Jonathan, You're welcome. Ideally you'd
Speaker 1: want a device where all of the energy going into
Speaker 1: it gets converted directly to visible photo. Right, that would
Speaker 1: be wonderful. I mean, it's never gonna happen, but it
Speaker 1: would be the goal. Right. But the closer the closer
Speaker 1: you can get to that, the higher the efficiency of
Speaker 1: your bul your light producing uh artifacts. So let's let's
Speaker 1: do a quick comparison of the three major types that
Speaker 1: we mentioned, incandescent, fluorescent and L E D s. All right,
Speaker 1: so incandescent modern sixty what Incandescent light bulbs have a
Speaker 1: life expectancy of around twelve hundred hours of use so
Speaker 1: well beyond the forty hours the of Edison's first light
Speaker 1: bulbs us and by the way, managed to get those
Speaker 1: light bulbs up to a much higher hours of lifetime
Speaker 1: than forty so they used three thousand kilowatt hours of
Speaker 1: electricity over the span of fifty thousand hours of use.
Speaker 1: Now you might be saying, wait, a sixty one incandescent
Speaker 1: light bulb has twelve hundred hours of lifetime, how could
Speaker 1: you get fifty thous hours of use out of it? Well,
Speaker 1: you couldn't get fifty thousand hours of use out of one.
Speaker 1: You would have You would have to have enough of
Speaker 1: these light bulbs to get the equivalent of fifty thousand
Speaker 1: hours of use, in this case forty two light bulbs
Speaker 1: to get fifty thousand hours of use over that fifty
Speaker 1: thousand hours, you would be using three thousand kilowatt hours
Speaker 1: of electricity. All right, so we get that all the way. Also,
Speaker 1: side note, they're pretty easy to manufacture, Yes, yes, which
Speaker 1: is positive for UM. It is important because that factors
Speaker 1: into how expensive they're going to be when you are
Speaker 1: going to buy them. So while they might not be
Speaker 1: terribly efficient, they're also not hard to make, so they're
Speaker 1: not expensive. Then you've got fluorescent bulbs, which last for
Speaker 1: approximately ten thousand hours, so nearly ten times as long
Speaker 1: as the incandescent bulbs. They require fourteen watts to reach
Speaker 1: the light equivalent of a sixty watt incandescent bulb, so
Speaker 1: they need less of a wattage to reach that same luminescence.
Speaker 1: They use seven kilowatt hours over fifty thousand hours of use,
Speaker 1: and you would just need five of them to reach
Speaker 1: that fifty thousand hours. But they're a little harder to
Speaker 1: make a little bit, and they also contain mercury, so
Speaker 1: that's another thing that you should remember that if you're
Speaker 1: ever disposing of fluorescent bulbs, you've got to be careful
Speaker 1: with them because mercury is poisonous. Don't break it up
Speaker 1: and lick it. No, well, I don't. I don't know
Speaker 1: what would possess you to do that, but definitely don't
Speaker 1: do it. Finally, we've got the LED bulbs. They can
Speaker 1: last fifty hours on a single bulb, so they can
Speaker 1: hit that fifty tho all in just one bulb. Attend
Speaker 1: what led bulb can give the equivalent light of a
Speaker 1: sixty what incandescent bulb it uses five l what hours
Speaker 1: of electricity over the course of fifty hours of use.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing about l e ED bulbs, they're
Speaker 1: pretty much a pain in the butt to manufacture. Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: if you've ever shopped for light bulbs and you've looked
Speaker 1: for LED bulbs, thinking I want to be as as
Speaker 1: efficient with my energy use as possible, you're gonna see
Speaker 1: that the price tag for those LED bulbs is significantly
Speaker 1: higher than for your alternatives. And if you did the
Speaker 1: math over the lifetime of the light bulbs and the
Speaker 1: amount of energy you would use, you would probably see
Speaker 1: that the l e ED is going to save you
Speaker 1: the money in the long run, but it has a
Speaker 1: higher upfront cost. So it all depends on your situation. Right,
Speaker 1: If you can afford the upfront cost, then it makes
Speaker 1: perfect sense to go and outfit your home with l
Speaker 1: a ED lights. Again, like, my house has got all
Speaker 1: these different weird light fixtures, some of which do not
Speaker 1: have LED alternatives for them. Like, there's not an LED
Speaker 1: light that's made in that size yet, or at least
Speaker 1: not one that I have been able to find. Uh
Speaker 1: So it's an exercise and frustration for me. But even
Speaker 1: if they did have all the LED fixtures. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that I would be able to do it because
Speaker 1: that would be really expensive to buy lights for every
Speaker 1: single fixture in my house. Like that's a big upfront cost.
Speaker 1: It is now again, over the lifetime, i'd be saving money.
Speaker 1: But if I don't have the cash to pay for
Speaker 1: it up front, that it doesn't help run. You know,
Speaker 1: one of the areas in which we've talked about using
Speaker 1: L e d s for future applications is in vertical farming,
Speaker 1: because you know, one of the problems with vertical farming.
Speaker 1: We've talked about vertical farming on the show before. The
Speaker 1: ideas that you you know, sort of stack up a
Speaker 1: greenhouse model within your cities, and this solves a lot
Speaker 1: of problems. The crops are less exposed to the you know,
Speaker 1: the weather, and so they're they're less vulnerable to changes
Speaker 1: in climate and whether they're also closer to their final destination.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of the food we consume is in cities,
Speaker 1: but you can't grow it in the cities normally, so
Speaker 1: it has large transportation costs, their spoilage. Having stuff in
Speaker 1: cities is good, but at the same time, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get all the light. You need to get even
Speaker 1: light distribution for your crops when you've got them stacked
Speaker 1: up in in the skyscraper and everything. Everything on the
Speaker 1: outside edge is going to have, you know, or at
Speaker 1: least everything on the eastern and western sides of the
Speaker 1: outside edge, you're going to have plenty of sun exposure.
Speaker 1: But some of the other areas, particularly the ones further inside,
Speaker 1: are not right. So what a lot of people who
Speaker 1: have researched vertical farming have said is that, well, you're
Speaker 1: really just going to have to supplement it with artificial lighting. Now,
Speaker 1: you you can use artificial lighting to help plants grow
Speaker 1: and grow healthy. You can use led bulbs like we've
Speaker 1: been talking about. But part of the problem there is,
Speaker 1: once you're investing that much money and energy into growing
Speaker 1: them in the city with all these light bulbs, is
Speaker 1: there really actually an advantage. Yeah, you might be negating
Speaker 1: that that cost savings and effort savings exactly right. But
Speaker 1: one of the interesting solutions I've seen to this is
Speaker 1: the idea of using only pink led light. The idea
Speaker 1: behind this is that plants need light to grow and survive. Sure,
Speaker 1: they size it right, but they might not need the
Speaker 1: entire visible spectrum, so some plants can survive on only
Speaker 1: some narrower frequency bands of light. And actually, so there
Speaker 1: are these things called pink pink houses, which are growing
Speaker 1: facilities that only use certain frequencies of light and use
Speaker 1: less energy by doing that and not producing white light,
Speaker 1: which is requires all the frequencies of light. Oh yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it makes it makes sense when you think about it
Speaker 1: in terms of color theories. And plants are green, they're
Speaker 1: they're reflecting a lot of those green spectrum photons and
Speaker 1: our wavelengths. I'm sorry, well, either way, I'm still likely correct.
Speaker 1: Light behaves is both a wave at a particle, right,
Speaker 1: so certainly right right, So so yeah, if you just
Speaker 1: shoot the kind of light that they're going to absorb
Speaker 1: anyway at them, then you're yeah, anyway, I thought that
Speaker 1: was interesting, Yeah, very interesting. Another question is simply how
Speaker 1: efficient can we make our LED lights for these kind
Speaker 1: of things. LED lights are already very efficient. I mean
Speaker 1: we've done a really really good job getting them pretty
Speaker 1: during efficient as far as energy consumption goes. Yes, oh
Speaker 1: sure sure. And it's definitely a possibility that the expensive
Speaker 1: processes and technologies that go into making l ed bulbs
Speaker 1: will be streamlined in the future. Those kind of technologies
Speaker 1: improve all the time. Oh yeah, that's a good win.
Speaker 1: So even if the bulbs themselves can't get much more efficient,
Speaker 1: maybe the process of making them can. Yeah, now, and
Speaker 1: that's that's definitely something that I think will improve. Um,
Speaker 1: maybe it will improve gradually over time. It's kind of
Speaker 1: to me it's the same as micro chips. They are
Speaker 1: one of those one of those things where we do
Speaker 1: get improvements in the processes, but it tends to be
Speaker 1: this kind of tick talk approach. That's what Intel calls it.
Speaker 1: They'll they'll create the technology to make microprocessors with ever
Speaker 1: ever smaller transistors or discrete elements on it, and then
Speaker 1: the talk part is where they maximize that technology and
Speaker 1: really are able to take advantage of it to the
Speaker 1: greatest extent they can before the next tick where they
Speaker 1: make it even smaller. So the talk tends to be
Speaker 1: a little bit uh more cost effective because they've already
Speaker 1: made the investment into increasing the technology so they can
Speaker 1: make these uh increasingly small elements on a on a
Speaker 1: silicon chip. So we might see something like that for
Speaker 1: light emitting diodes, but there are other other alternatives, folks,
Speaker 1: you mean, apart from L E d s, there are
Speaker 1: tell me about the bulb of the future light which
Speaker 1: might not be bulb shaped. Now it might it actually
Speaker 1: may not even need to have a and may not
Speaker 1: need to be encapsulated in anything. Light emitting electrochemical cells,
Speaker 1: so that sounds really complicated. They're sometimes called l E
Speaker 1: c s or sometimes l E e c s because
Speaker 1: it's light emitting at least. Uh So, well, I guess
Speaker 1: it all depends on whether you think it's a hard
Speaker 1: see or self see. So it sounds like it's a mouthful.
Speaker 1: But the light emitting electrochemical cells, but first, you know,
Speaker 1: electrochemical cells are something that we're all familiar with already.
Speaker 1: Batteries are an example of an electrochemical cell. So electrochemical
Speaker 1: cells are just they they allow either the transmission of
Speaker 1: generation of of electricity through some form of chemical reaction. Now,
Speaker 1: in the case of light emitting electro chemical cells, well
Speaker 1: the whole things in the name, right, it emits light
Speaker 1: when you have electricity introduced into this, So it's a
Speaker 1: solid state device kind of like LEDs. But let's talk
Speaker 1: about it in the form of a sandwich, right, it
Speaker 1: would it would be a polymer sandwich because you talk
Speaker 1: about whatever's in the middle is the sandwich part, right
Speaker 1: like you wouldn't you would say, like a you know,
Speaker 1: a roast beef sandwich, lowrist beefs in the middle, it's
Speaker 1: not the bread parts. So in this case, be a
Speaker 1: polymer sandwich. So the middle of the sandwich is the
Speaker 1: light emitting polymer which is filled with mobile ions. Uh.
Speaker 1: The bottom of the sandwich, the base of the bulb,
Speaker 1: in other words, could be if you wanted it to be.
Speaker 1: It could be an opaque electrode wouldn't have to be
Speaker 1: the top layer would have to be transparent in order
Speaker 1: to let light pass through. Otherwise you would have these
Speaker 1: opaque coverings and light would be generated in between them,
Speaker 1: but you wouldn't be able to see it, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be useful. It's a light bulb, it would be. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'd be like if you've got a light bulb dipped
Speaker 1: it in paint and then the paint was so thick
Speaker 1: that it would not allow light to pass through, it's
Speaker 1: not useful. So uh, a lot of them will use uh,
Speaker 1: you know, various types of very thin, thin layers to
Speaker 1: act as these electrodes that are effectively transparent. Uh So,
Speaker 1: like indium tin oxide was used in a lot of
Speaker 1: the early ones. I'm seeing now that graphing is starting
Speaker 1: to be used in in prototype. Yeah. So graphing, by
Speaker 1: the way, in case you forgot, that's the sheet of
Speaker 1: carbon atoms that's one atom thick. If you were to
Speaker 1: roll graphing into a tube, you would have a carbon nanotube. Um. So,
Speaker 1: graphing is being used as the electrode of choice by
Speaker 1: a lot of different researchers. And one of the biggest
Speaker 1: advantages of l c s over l e d s
Speaker 1: is that they are potentially way easier to mass produce.
Speaker 1: So we had talked about how l e d s
Speaker 1: have this product shin challenge that it's it's a very intensive,
Speaker 1: energy inefficient means of making the light bulbs. Light bulbs
Speaker 1: themselves are efficient, but the manufacturing process isn't as because
Speaker 1: it's it's complicated. There's a lot of stuff going on.
Speaker 1: L e c s are potentially way less complicated. You
Speaker 1: could print them because you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: precision as much. Printing is not a very precise way
Speaker 1: of going about making something because the layers of think
Speaker 1: of it as ink can vary greatly across an entire sheet. However,
Speaker 1: with l e c s that thickness is not critical
Speaker 1: to the operation of the l e C So you
Speaker 1: could do it using this kind of method of production
Speaker 1: and not worry about impacting the effectiveness of the ultimate
Speaker 1: bulb that you create. Yeah, so you can make a
Speaker 1: lot of it. Potentially, you can make a lot of
Speaker 1: it much more quickly than you could with L e
Speaker 1: d s, thus bringing the cost way down for the consumer. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now there are some challenges. One of the big ones
Speaker 1: is getting l e c s to have their lifetime
Speaker 1: up to comparable levels with the other technologies. So, according
Speaker 1: to a report in the journal Chemical Science, researchers at
Speaker 1: the universities of is It boss L, Basil, b A
Speaker 1: S E L. This is where I have no idea
Speaker 1: and valencia that one I know how to say. Uh,
Speaker 1: they have created l e cs with an effective life
Speaker 1: of So that's better than incandescent bulbs already. It's almost
Speaker 1: more than twice the lifetime of your average incandescent bulb
Speaker 1: at sixty watts anyway, but still well below l E
Speaker 1: d s, which are at fifty hours, So it's not
Speaker 1: it's it's promising. It's not uh at the level right
Speaker 1: now where you would necessarily switch from one to the other,
Speaker 1: even if it were ready for for the construction, which
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily um. Also, they might never be as quick
Speaker 1: acting as L E D s. One benefit of LEDs
Speaker 1: is that you turn it on, You flip the switch,
Speaker 1: and the bulb turns on pretty much instantaneously, um, which
Speaker 1: is also a good point on incandescent bulbs. But depending
Speaker 1: on what substance um you're using, as in a mirror
Speaker 1: for the L E C, it can take a while
Speaker 1: for for the photons to start photoning right, so kind
Speaker 1: of like a fluorescent bulb, like an old school fluorescent bulb.
Speaker 1: These days they've got these uh these like proactive switches
Speaker 1: in them, but carrying a little bit of a charge
Speaker 1: to begin with, so that they can they can have
Speaker 1: like a dim section, a dim session and completely right way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I remember those old bulbs where you would turn
Speaker 1: it on and you would get the little flickering ink well,
Speaker 1: which also can happen as the bulb gets older and
Speaker 1: the electrodes start to have That's also where you used
Speaker 1: to get the annoying, buzzing noise that fluorescent bulbs used
Speaker 1: to make. You don't get it so much anymore because
Speaker 1: they have these little starters, as Ned Flanders would say,
Speaker 1: they hum like angels. It's odd, though, right, because we
Speaker 1: all still have the association of those things when we
Speaker 1: think Floresce embulbs. Those are the sort of things we
Speaker 1: think about, or at least those are the sort of
Speaker 1: things I think about when I think Florence embulbs, even
Speaker 1: if it may not no longer be true anymore. Sure sure, um,
Speaker 1: So we might never get an L E C TV
Speaker 1: is the thing, like, it's probably never going to be
Speaker 1: the best technology for things that need to refresh at
Speaker 1: a at a constant rate, like like a high graphic display. Um.
Speaker 1: But there's some really cool potentials with these things. Um.
Speaker 1: For for instance, you can create lots of different colors
Speaker 1: of light depending on what substance you're using as an emitter.
Speaker 1: UM researchers are actually still kind of working on making
Speaker 1: good clean white light from L A C s. It's
Speaker 1: the one of the current challenges and getting the product
Speaker 1: up to market. If you want a lavender bulbo, they
Speaker 1: got the technology for you. But if you want just
Speaker 1: a regular white bulb. We're still working so you can
Speaker 1: sell it to music venues before you can sell it
Speaker 1: to or or high school students from like three light
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, yes, put a unicorn on that baby. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and also um, although l e c's have been
Speaker 1: most commonly created on on glass, you can also totally
Speaker 1: use a flexible and even stretchable substrates as as your base. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This could mean that we have some truly inventive uh
Speaker 1: light sources in our future, like things that you know
Speaker 1: that we don't even associate with a thing that makes
Speaker 1: light now, which is really cool, Like the idea that
Speaker 1: with some creative application of this technology, we could have
Speaker 1: totally new form factors for light sources, which maybe we'll
Speaker 1: end up at tron a boy can dream. So we
Speaker 1: had one last bit and Joe, I think you added
Speaker 1: this in our notes. Well, I was just recalling how
Speaker 1: maybe the future of light is that we don't need light?
Speaker 1: Know why? Well, I do you remember back when we
Speaker 1: talked about what humans would look like in the future, like,
Speaker 1: you know, if humans continue evolving, how will we change?
Speaker 1: And there was this one article in Forbes. I think
Speaker 1: I recall where there are a couple of people were
Speaker 1: speculating they were drawing pictures of these humans with huge
Speaker 1: eyes and stuff, and they're like, this is what humans
Speaker 1: will look like in the future, or at least that's
Speaker 1: how it was interpreted. I think they defended themselves by
Speaker 1: saying like, no, no, no, no no, we're just kind of guessing,
Speaker 1: and well, they essentially what they said was, we said,
Speaker 1: if you take this assumption that humans are going to
Speaker 1: be genetically modifying themselves so that they alter their appearance
Speaker 1: in some way, and if you take the assumption and
Speaker 1: extend it down this particular path, here's what they might
Speaker 1: look like. So, in other words, they were saying, we
Speaker 1: never said this is what humans are gonna look like.
Speaker 1: We said this is what humans could look like, which
Speaker 1: I think at that point you wonder why would bother
Speaker 1: or even making a picture. Well for the sake of conversation, yea, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's interesting, and their argument being that it would be
Speaker 1: evolutionarily advantageous for us to be able to see in
Speaker 1: the dark when we are colonizing new dark planets. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think they said that it would be actually, uh,
Speaker 1: we would re engineer ourselves to have gigantic eyes that
Speaker 1: could take in huge amounts of you know, that basically
Speaker 1: could see in the dark very well, because that would
Speaker 1: be more energy efficient, you know, we wouldn't have to
Speaker 1: waste so much energy official lighting if we could just
Speaker 1: see in the dark. I mean, aside from the concerns
Speaker 1: about how feasible that kind of genetic engineering is, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I it seems kind of far
Speaker 1: fetched to me, but I guess I can't dismiss it
Speaker 1: out of hand. Maybe someday we would change ourselves. Another
Speaker 1: way we could think about it is, let's imagine that
Speaker 1: we become much more comfortable with wearing some kind of
Speaker 1: goggles all the time, you know, like the next stage
Speaker 1: beyond hollow lens and Google glass, we have some kind
Speaker 1: of augmented reality tech goggles that we use. Would it
Speaker 1: just be that we decide, hey, it's actually much more
Speaker 1: efficient instead of lighting all our environments to just have
Speaker 1: our glasses all have night vision. Uh. Again, seems kind
Speaker 1: of far fetched, but maybe maybe, I guess. I guess
Speaker 1: it would depend on on again, how the manufacture of
Speaker 1: those technologies moved along. Right now, it's still relatively expensive
Speaker 1: to create reliable night visions, so but yeah, if it's
Speaker 1: you have to reach that tipping point right where the
Speaker 1: alternative is more energy efficient and more economical than the
Speaker 1: artificial light. And until we reach that point, the artificial
Speaker 1: light is clearly going to be more more abundant. I
Speaker 1: just imagine that if we do come to that stage
Speaker 1: where we're all just looking through night vision goggles in
Speaker 1: dark houses all the time, what's that going to be
Speaker 1: like for our pets. I'm just thinking. I think I'm
Speaker 1: just thinking of coming home one day and saying, honey,
Speaker 1: I looked at I looked at the store lightbulb. Bulbs
Speaker 1: are twenty dollars a piece. I'm getting my eyes and
Speaker 1: big and they'll be back in. Yes, I think I
Speaker 1: think cats pry my eyelids. I think cats would throw
Speaker 1: us a party if we stopped putting bright lights on
Speaker 1: all the time. I don't know, they might actually get
Speaker 1: upset of the fact that we can actually see what
Speaker 1: they're up to. Cats cats are very particular about that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Uh, well, this was kind of fun
Speaker 1: to talk about the idea of let's just look at
Speaker 1: something that a lot of us take for granted that
Speaker 1: is a basic element in our lives, something that we
Speaker 1: that's all around us all the time, and we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily think about that frequently. Despite the fact that we
Speaker 1: do associate having an idea with a lightbulb going on,
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily actually think about the light bulbs themselves
Speaker 1: so much. So this was a lot of fun. Oh
Speaker 1: and one last thing before before we go into our
Speaker 1: outroar here, I wanted to come back with I had
Speaker 1: actually written a thing about how old wine was for
Speaker 1: what the stuff, So I'm not sure why I was
Speaker 1: totally blanking on it earlier. But wine has been around,
Speaker 1: we suspect for about nine thousand years. Cave paintings date
Speaker 1: back as long as forty years, so there's a good
Speaker 1: amount of time during which people were probably not drunk
Speaker 1: unless they found a slightly rotten plum. Uh wow, that's
Speaker 1: a long time to look at cave painting sober. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On that note, if you guys have any suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics we should cover in the future, like what's the
Speaker 1: future of wine or anything else for that matter, you
Speaker 1: should let us know. We love hearing from you, so
Speaker 1: definitely send us a message our email addresses FW thinking
Speaker 1: at hell Stuff Works dot com, or you can drop
Speaker 1: us a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus. At
Speaker 1: Twitter and Google Plus, we are FW thinking. At Facebook,
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Speaker 1: look forward to hearing from you, and you hear from
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