The comparison with edison is just ridiculous.
Bottle light inventor proud to be poor
61–70 of 84 posts
Re: Bottle light inventor proud to be poor
#62That's such an obvious solution I can't believe nobody thought of that before this guy.
Weird.
Re: Bottle light inventor proud to be poor
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
All those sound plausible (having never been to a favela), and if true I agree with you on almost all counts. But it's still not a substitute for a light bulb unless it works in the dark.
I'm not sure that's fair. It is bulb shape and it emits light. The source of the light happens to be the sun. This is kind of like saying that tungsten lamps aren't lightbulbs because they don't work when not supplied with electricity. They're truly acting as a substitute by spreading light around a darkened area.
We're just arguing semantics here.
Re: Bottle light inventor proud to be poor
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably you've never seen a slum, so let me explain: - Houses are juxtaposed to each other, there's no room for windows - Roofs are corrugated, so you can't easily fit a top glass panel even if you have the money for one. - There are transparent, fiber glass roofs, and some people use those, but often they don't get to choose the materials used to build the house, just use what is available. So this is a quite nice…
All those sound plausible (having never been to a favela), and if true I agree with you on almost all counts. But it's still not a substitute for a light bulb unless it works in the dark.
May not be true of what passes for slums in the US, but in other countries the next house in a slum begins where the current one ends. With hardly any windows to let natural light in, the indoors are quite dark even during the day. So yes, while it might not work at night unless there is a strong source of light such as streetlights nearby, it certainly does offer visual comfort during the day.
Re: Bottle light inventor proud to be poor
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lights are used indoors all day long in much of the world. If you don't like poking holes in your roof, then you probably don't like sun windows either. The gravity light requires manual labor to produce light, has moving parts that are more likely to fail, is more costly, and produces less light.
The gravity light produces a shamefully small amount of power - about 100 mW ("one deciwatt") by the manufacturer's own measurement. Even given the increased efficiency of LEDs, the illumination provided by one of these "bottle lights" is still about 100x greater, it's basically free, and it doesn't require you to tend to it every 15 - 30 minutes.
It would, however, work as an addition to bottle lights, to be used at night.
Re: Bottle light inventor proud to be poor
#66The title of this article bothers me since the article focuses much more on the bottle and light and rather than how poor and proud Alfredo Moser is. Regardless, pretty cool exposure of life in the slums, I'd bet there are more 'hacks' as a means of survival that are necessary there, but we wouldn't think twice about. I will say the article is good, just don't like the title.
I can understand being proud of a beneficial invention and offering something to people without taking money for it. He's done an amazing good deed and hopefully will be remembered for this. But I don't understand the title of the article because I think taking pride in poverty is a weird position to be taking. The headline might just be catchy click bait.
>But I don't understand the title of the article because I think taking pride in poverty is a weird position to be taking.
Weird? It's one of the constant positions on poverty since the dawn of civilization -- from christianity and buddhism (the original, not the watered down California style) to bohemianism, communism and so on. Including the "proud, hardworking people" in most rural communities, etc.
Re: Bottle light inventor proud to be poor
#67Hmm. This would also be really useful in doing underground greenhouses. A tin sheet is cheap. You dig a hole, however long, wide, and deep. Then, you can get in the hole and plant whatever in there. Once done, you can cover it up with the sheet (or wood or whatever) and put the bottle-lights inside. That way, you keep the pests out of your new garden.
It does not seem like that would be very practical. Very few economically important plants will thrive in anything less than full sunlight. This makes sense because most plants become economically important because they are productive (good at turning sunlight into something we want like calories or wood). The exceptions are plants that are grown for some valuable quality which is only needed in scarce quantities, li…
Yeah, I didn't understand the hydroponics comment at the end. How does it work better to grow plants indoors than outside if you're using a limited amount of sunlight indoors? Are there other factors that make it worth it?
Re: Bottle light inventor proud to be poor
#68"The lamps work best with a black cap..." - why would that be so? Wouldn't a reflective cap work well too?
The explanation is lot simpler in practise than most comments have explained so far.
From my own experience, in lame terms, if you use non-black caps, for arguments sake let's say you use a red cap from a coca-cola bottle, that red cap will reflect some light as well as the water. And inside the room the bottle will not "shine" as bright as it could and depending on the Sun's position the room will have red'ish rays - like a rainbow.
So using any colour cap and covering the bottle cap with old photographic film containers like this one http://www.kveller.com/images/Article_images/film-canister.j... will prevent the non-black cap from stealing sun rays from the water.
Re: Bottle light inventor proud to be poor
#69You can't turn off the fucking thing.
It automatically turns itself off at night. And then back on again in the morning; and not in with the shocking "argh! my eyes!" suddenness of an incandescent, but a gradual taper that allows your eyes to adjust slowly.
Also, you could use a cup and a rubber-band to cover it if you needed darkness mid-day.
Re: Bottle light inventor proud to be poor
#70You can't turn off the fucking thing.
It's like a Window. You can “turn off” a window by putting a curtain over it.