Linked by weildish on Wed 4th Feb 2009 04:54 UTC
In the News Yes, actually. The old-school, inefficient, heat-generating incandescent bulbs are all but history, CFL (compact florescent) bulbs taking the pedestal what with how relatively inexpensive and efficient they are when it comes to both electricity consumption and overhead cost. However, even these may have a short-lived supremacy as British scientists developed a new way of "growing" the material needed for LEDs on silicon instead of sapphire wafers, which was the original and somewhat expensive way of doing it. Because of this, household-grade lights of LED nature can be produced for under $5.00 and last up to sixty years. LEDs are three times more efficient than CFLs, last substantially longer, and contain no mercury, so they're even more environmentally friendly. These wonder-bulbs are supposed to be available to consumers within two years. It is estimated that if these new bulbs were to be installed in every home and office, it would cut electricity used on lighting by 75%. I'll take twenty of those, please.
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Comment by sb56637
by sb56637 on Wed 4th Feb 2009 12:38 UTC
sb56637
Member since:
2006-05-11

I wonder what color these next gen LED bulbs will be? Can they produce "warm" natural light or just stark white?

RE: Comment by sb56637
by GoldenMedian on Wed 4th Feb 2009 13:13 in reply to "Comment by sb56637"
GoldenMedian Member since:
2009-02-04

I wonder what color these next gen LED bulbs will be? Can they produce "warm" natural light or just stark white?


I'd guess the "stark white" you think of is due to the awful "white" LED bicycle headlights, etc, which are actually blue (or violet?) LED's with fluorescent coating. Next gen could be tunable multiple-chip lamps (vary the current through each of red, yellow, green, blue, violet, etc) where you can have your "warm" olde-yellow ;) and I can have my bright, exciting, sunny 5900K white.

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