Seventy-six Go-Pros led the big parade…
Go-Pro attached to a trombone slide
Seventy-six Go-Pros led the big parade…
Go-Pro attached to a trombone slide
…on fire slow mo flying liquids. Filmed at 2500fps
Converting mechanical work to thermal energy. Old school.
I ran across a bit touting some new lamp, called GravityLight, which would give you “free” lighting — all you have to do is lift a weight. My first reaction was a flashback to the Gravia lamp, which I critiqued in the first few months of this blog. Turns out the Gravia was a concept piece that had over-reached the light output and duration that was possible — it was only capable of putting out a few tens of milliWatts to generate the light, well short of what was promised.
But the GravityLight appears to be the real deal, and it’s being funded on indiegogo as a replacement for kerosene lamps in areas without a power grid. The difference? It promises less light over a shorter time, plus a slight increase in efficiency of LEDs, and that’s all the difference you need. Instead of 800 lumens of light, sent in all directions, you get a beam from the LEDs. If you drop the output from 4*pi steradians (i.e. all directions) to, say, 1/8 of that, it’s the equivalent of just 100 lumens, and super-bright LEDs have a luminous efficacy of about 100 lumens per Watt, meaning you only need ~1 Watt output for such a light.
The previous system could only supply ~17 milliWatts of power, but that was because the energy was promised over a 4-hour period. If you release the same energy over a shorter time, the power is greater. A 20kg mass raised a little over a meter is 200 Joules, so that’s a Watt for 200 seconds. If you lower the light output, via dimming or making a narrower beam, or you use a greater mass and/or raise it higher, it will last longer.
Colored Vibrating Sand, Buddhist Singing Bowls and Levitating Megaliths
A Chladni plate and a Tibetan singing bowl.
[A] Rube Goldberg machine that lights the Chanukah menorah. Hanukkah is the holiday of miracles and here is another one.
(Personally I think a consistent spelling of Chanukah/Hanukkah would also be a miracle.)
I’m a little disappointed in the camera work — many shots are too tight and quick, IMO — you don’t get a feel for the inter-connectedness of the device. And the use of a robotic arm at the end isn’t kosher (I’m more of an orthodox Goldbergist.); I thinks it’s more accurate to say that the R-G device starts the robotic arm, which then lights the menorah.