I've been cursing Shuji Nakamura since about 2005. Suddenly every gizmo had a blue LED brighter than the sun. Took me months to realize that all that blue light was wreaking havoc on my sleep cycle.
I miss the antique glowing greens
The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics
51–54 of 54 posts
Re: The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm really glad that there is an industrial use for them. Blue ones are used, at least around my area, to decorate things.
Severe jaundice in newborns is treated with blue leds http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/leds-used-to-help... Edit: LED lasers that enabled things like the Internet (Optical fibers often use DBF Lasers) were invented by Alferov and Kroemer that also shared the physics Nobel price in 2000.
Cool. It works because bilirubin oxidises under blue light into a form more soluble in water.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonatal_jaundice#Treatment
Re: The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics
#53To bring home lighting in practice to within one order of magnitude of 100% luminous efficiency is certainly deserving of the Nobel Prize. It was not so long ago that people had to make due with rush lights: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rushlight
I tried to find a graph of inflation adjusted lighting prices, but found some interesting links:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_lighting_technology
Re: The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics
#54One person who should also have got the Nobel prize for pioneering work on III-V LED's is Nick Holonyak.