Many of the more than 7,000 islands that make up the Philippines do not have electricity - and when the sun sets below the horizon, the necessary light can be obtained largely only from kerosene lamps. And, as you know, kerosene, although incredibly cheap, is catastrophically harmful to environment and the health of the person himself. These factors prompted the startup SALt (Sustainable Alternative Lighting) to find The best decision. The lamp they developed burns for 8 hours and requires only a glass of water and two teaspoons of regular salt.
Engineer and Greenpeace volunteer Isa Miheno came up with the idea for SALt after living for some time among a Filipino tribe using only kerosene lamps for lighting. She decided to replace these harmful and dangerous lamps with what is available in abundance in the Philippines: sea water.
The SALt LED lamp operates on the basis of a galvanic battery, the electrolyte of which consists exclusively of salt water with two immersed electrodes.
As with any battery, the lamp's charge-carrying electrodes will not last forever. According to the developers, one lamp can be used for eight hours a day for six months, after which the anode will require replacement - which, however, is much less troublesome than constantly refilling kerosene lamps. The inventors also claim that the finished product will be able to charge smartphones via a USB port.
The company aims to start by delivering 600 lamps to Filipino tribes, but also plans to scale production and bring the lamps to market in early 2016. The price of the finished lamp has not yet been finally determined.
The Japanese company Hitachi Maxell has developed a flashlight lamp that uses batteries instead of batteries to operate salt water. A new product called Mizusion can be a great help in an emergency or in case of a sudden power outage.
How it works
To make Mizusion work, it is not at all necessary to look for the nearest outlet to the sea - just put a few spoons of salt in a special container and fill them with water. But that is not all. Need replacement cartridges from magnesium alloy. They act as an anode, and a positively charged electrode is obtained due to oxygen in the atmosphere. As a result, the system generates electricity.
Mizusion provides a luminous flux of 2000 lux, one cartridge is enough for 80 hours of continuous operation, but you may need to change the water several times. The lamp will work even after standing in a closet for 10 years. It can be added to the disaster survival kits that the prudent Japanese collect.
How much does it cost?
In Japan, Mizusion can be purchased for about $26 excluding tax, while metal cartridges cost $9 each. Stephen Hawking could
The design of LED lamps differs significantly from the design of conventional incandescent lamps. This is often the explanation for why LED lamps continue to light when the switch is turned off (sorry for the tautology).
LED lamp device
Despite the variety of models and differences technical solutions Depending on the manufacturer, each LED lamp has the following main components:
- base;
- frame;
- LEDs;
- driver.
As in conventional lighting fixtures, the base is used for fastening, and the body is used to accommodate the main elements. Some of the lamps are equipped with radiators for cooling. Lighting sources are LEDs - semiconductor elements that convert electrical energy V light radiation. The voltage they consume is significantly lower than the usual 220 V, and therefore the power is much less than that consumed by ordinary light bulbs. This is the basis for savings in the operation of LED lamps. But to create the required voltage, it is necessary to use special converters (drivers) that lower it to the required value. This is where the main differences appear. The converter is a complex device consisting of electronic components: a diode bridge, resistors, transistors, capacitors, chokes, and sometimes transformers.
Why do LED lamps work after being turned off?
The glow of the device when it is turned off can be caused by several reasons.
Operation of the capacitor included in the driver
Property LED lamps Many consumers are quite logically surprised to continue working when the lights are off. Electricity is not supplied, but the device is functioning. Then there arises next question: Where does the food come from? Some electronic components are capable of storing electrical energy. A capacitor is one of them. It is part of the LED lamp. While it glows from the network, it accumulates electricity. When the electricity is completely turned off, the container releases the accumulated energy and acts as a in this case voltage source. It is because of this detail that LED lamps may burn briefly after being turned off.
The capacitance is considered reactance, since it is capable of returning consumed power to the network. If it were not an integral element of LED lamps, then they would not be able to shine when the electricity was turned off. Similar to how ordinary lamps stop working after being turned off, because they are very simple devices, which do not contain reactive elements. When the electricity stored by the capacitor runs out, it stops being a power source and producing voltage, as a result of which the LED lamps stop receiving energy and go out. In this case, the accumulated charge is only enough for a few seconds to maintain the operation of the device after turning off.
It is unlikely that this couple of moments of glow needs to be eliminated. Moreover, the capacity performs important role in power conversion: it smoothes out ripples in voltage after a decrease.
LED switch
If the LED lamp glows for a long time after being turned off, then the reason is different. The lighting fixture may be used in conjunction with a switch. Very often an LED switch is used, which, in addition to the main function of disconnecting electrical circuit, also performs an additional function: it shines when the lamp is turned off. To do this, it is equipped with an LED, which is supplied with voltage when the light bulb is not working. Thanks to parallel connection The lamp is not receiving power. That is, at this moment, an electric current passes through the switch LED, which charges the above-mentioned capacitor. When the latter accumulates a sufficient amount of electricity, it begins to send it to the network, acting as a power source. LED light bulbs receive this electricity and glow. After the reactive element is discharged, there is no energy and the light bulb stops burning. The capacitor is then charged again and the process repeats. It will light up and then go out, which visually looks like blinking.
Important! This drawback disrupts the normal operation of the device, increases the amount of electricity consumed, and shortens its service life.
It is necessary to consider what can be done to eliminate the described defect.
Ways to eliminate flickering
- The easiest way out is to replace the switch with another one that does not light up. Once the entire circuit is open, it will not glow, so no voltage will be required during the shutdown, and no current will flow to recharge the capacitor. The advantages of this method are speed and simplicity, but its disadvantage is the additional financial costs of a new switch.
- Self-removal of the backlight from the switch. In this case, you will need to disassemble the lamp body, unscrew or use wire cutters to bite off the wire that goes to the resistor and LED.
- Adding a shunt resistor. This method Suitable for those who want both the LED light and the switch to glow in the dark. But its implementation requires some technical steps. First of all, you will need to purchase a resistor with a resistance of about 50 kOhm and a power of 2-3 W, this can be found in any radio parts store. Then you need to remove the lamp shade, and plug the wires coming from the resistor into the terminal block to which the network wires are connected.
As a result, the resistor will be connected in parallel with the lamp and, when it is turned off, the current flowing through the switch LED will also flow through the resistor, and not through the driver capacitor, so it will not have the opportunity to recharge. As a result, it will not burn LED lamp with the switch off.Important! Before starting work, you should de-energize the circuit by turning off the machine, and when working, you must follow safety precautions. Do not do this work yourself if you are not confident in your abilities. Work with high voltage life-threatening!
If the owner does not want to do electrical work, as suggested by the described methods, then you can simply additionally screw in a regular incandescent lamp if there is a free socket in the chandelier. The disadvantages of this method is that it will shine when the LED lamp is turned off. This will change the blinking to constant. Another disadvantage is that the screwed-in light bulb will consume electricity at times when lighting is not required at all.
Errors when connecting electrical wiring to the switch
If the LED lamp continues to work even when it is turned off, and the person does not use the backlit switch, then the reason may be incorrect wiring: a zero was connected to the switch instead of a phase. In this case, when the circuit is opened, the zero is switched off, not the phase, as a result of which the wiring is energized. As a result, the lamp lights up when the switch is off. This situation must be corrected by connecting the wires correctly. Otherwise, during a scheduled replacement of the lighting fixture, even when everything is turned off, there will be a danger of receiving an electric shock, since the wiring will be live.
Whatever method you choose to eliminate the blinking of LED lights after turning off, compliance with safety regulations is mandatory, and error-free connection of the wiring to the switch is the key to normal operation of the device.
Remember what the great scientist Nikola Tesla told us 100 years ago?
And how the tycoon Morgan disliked him for this, who did not benefit from this state of affairs - after all, he then controlled the market copper wires. Who would need his copper if electricity was transmitted without wires?
But this was a preface - and the word will come ahead...
Why is the light on?
First, a preface about how this article appeared in the first place.
About five years ago, I registered on some student forum and published an article there about what mistakes our academic science makes in the interpretation of many basic principles, how alternative science corrects these mistakes, and how academic science is at war with alternative science, labeling it " pseudoscience" and accusing him of all mortal sins. My article hung in free access about 10 minutes, after which it was thrown into the sump. I was immediately sent to an indefinite ban and forbidden to appear with them. A few days later, I decided to register on other student sites to repeat my attempt with the publication of this article. But it turned out that I was already blacklisted on all these sites and they refused to register me. As far as I understand, information about undesirable persons is exchanged between student forums, and being blacklisted on one site means automatic relegation from all others.
Then I decided to go to the Kvant magazine, which specializes in popular science articles for schoolchildren and university students. But since in practice this magazine is more oriented towards a school audience, the article had to be significantly simplified. I threw out everything about pseudoscience and left only a description of one physical phenomenon and gave it a new interpretation. That is, the article turned from a technical journalistic into a purely technical one. But I did not receive any response from the editors to my request. Previously, I always received an answer from the editorial offices of magazines, even if the editors rejected my article. From this I concluded that I was also blacklisted by the editorial office. So my article never saw the light of day.
Five years have passed. I decided to contact the editors of Kvant again. But even after five years there was no response to my request. This means that I am still on their black list. So I decided not to fight anymore windmills, and I publish the article here on the site. Of course, it’s a pity that the vast majority of schoolchildren will not see it. But here I can’t do anything. So, here is the article itself....
There probably won't be anything like it settlement on our planet, where there will be no light bulbs. Large and small, fluorescent and halogen, for flashlights and powerful military searchlights - they have become so firmly established in our lives that they have become as familiar to us as the air we breathe. The operating principles of light bulbs seem so clear and obvious to us that almost no one thinks about the mechanics of their operation. Nevertheless, this phenomenon conceals a huge mystery that has not yet been fully solved. Let's try to figure it out ourselves.
Let us have a pool with two pipes, through one of which water flows into the pool, through the other it flows out of it. Let us assume that 10 kilograms of water enter the pool every second, and in the pool itself 2 kilograms of these ten are somehow magically processed into electromagnetic radiation and is thrown out. Question: How much water will leave the pool through the other pipe? Probably even a first grader will answer that 8 kilograms of water will be lost per second.
Let's change the example a little. Let there be electric wires instead of pipes, and an electric light bulb instead of a swimming pool. Let's look at the situation again. One wire carries, say, 1 million electrons per second into a light bulb. If we believe that part of this million is converted into light radiation and thrown out of the lamp into the surrounding space, then a smaller number of electrons will leave the lamp along the other wire. What will the measurements show? They will show that the electric current in the circuit does not change. Current is the flow of electrons. And if the electric current is the same in both wires, that means that the number of electrons leaving the lamp is equal to the number of electrons entering the lamp. And light radiation is a type of matter that cannot appear from a complete void, but can only appear from another variety. And if in this case light radiation cannot come from electrons, then where does matter come from in the form of light radiation?
This phenomenon of the glow of an electric light bulb also conflicts with one very important law physicists elementary particles- the law of conservation of the so-called lepton charge. According to this law, an electron can disappear with the emission of a gamma quantum only in an annihilation reaction with its antiparticle, a positron. But there cannot be any positrons as carriers of antimatter in a light bulb. And then we get a literally catastrophic situation: all the electrons entering the light bulb along one wire, without any annihilation reactions, leave the light bulb along the other wire, but at the same time, new matter appears in the light bulb itself in the form of light radiation.
And here’s another interesting effect associated with wires and lamps. Many years ago, the famous physicist Nikola Tesla performed a mysterious experiment of energy transfer through a single wire, which he repeated in our time Russian physicist Avramenko. The essence of the experiment was as follows. We take the most ordinary transformer and connect it with the primary winding to an electric generator or network. One end of the secondary winding wire is simply dangling in the air, the other end is pulled into the next room and there we connect it to a bridge of four diodes with a light bulb in the middle. We apply voltage to the transformer and the light comes on. But there is only one wire going to it, and for the electrical circuit to work, two wires are needed. At the same time, according to scientists studying this phenomenon, the wire going to the light bulb does not heat up at all. It does not heat up so much that instead of copper or aluminum you can use any metal with very high resistivity, and it will still remain cold. Moreover, the thickness of the wire can be reduced to the thickness of a human hair, and the installation will still work without problems and without generating heat in the wire. Until now, no one has been able to explain this phenomenon of energy transfer through one wire without any losses. And now I will try to give my explanation of this phenomenon.
There is such a concept in physics - physical vacuum. It should not be confused with technical vacuum. Technical vacuum is synonymous with emptiness. When we remove all air molecules from a vessel, we create a technical vacuum. Physical vacuum is completely different; it is a kind of analogue of all-pervading matter or environment. All scientists working in this field have no doubt about the existence of physical vacuum, because its reality is confirmed by many well known facts and phenomena. They argue about the presence of energy in it. Some people talk about an extremely small amount of energy, others are inclined to think about a super-huge amount of energy. Give precise definition impossible in a physical vacuum. But you can give an approximate definition through its characteristics. For example, this: a physical vacuum is a special all-pervading medium that forms the space of the Universe, generates matter and time, participates in many processes, has enormous energy, but is not visible to us due to the lack of the necessary sense organs and therefore seems empty to us. It must be especially emphasized: physical vacuum is not emptiness, it only appears to be emptiness. And if you take this position, then many riddles can be solved quite easily. For example, the mystery of inertia.
What inertia is is still not clear. Moreover, the phenomenon of inertia even contradicts the third law of mechanics: action is equal to reaction. For this reason, sometimes they even try to declare inertial forces illusory and fictitious. But if we fall in a sharply braking bus under the influence of inertial forces and get a bump on our forehead, how illusory and fictitious will this bump be? In reality, inertia arises as a reaction of physical vacuum to our movement.
When we sit in a car and press on the gas, we begin to move unevenly (accelerated) and with this movement of the gravitational field of our body we deform the structure of the physical vacuum surrounding us, imparting some energy to it. And the vacuum reacts to this by creating inertial forces that pull us back in order to leave us at rest and thereby eliminate the deformation introduced from it. To overcome the forces of inertia, a lot of energy is required, which results in high fuel consumption for acceleration. Further uniform motion has no effect on the physical vacuum, and therefore it does not create inertial forces, so fuel consumption during uniform motion is less. And when we start to slow down, we again move unevenly (slowly) and again deform the physical vacuum with our uneven movement, and it again reacts to this by creating inertial forces that pull us forward to leave us in a state of uniform rectilinear movement, when there is no vacuum deformation. But now we no longer transfer energy to the vacuum, but it gives it to us, and this energy is released in the form of heat in the brake pads of the car.
Such accelerated-uniformly-decelerated motion of a car is nothing more than a single cycle of oscillatory motion of low frequency and enormous amplitude. At the acceleration stage, energy is introduced into the vacuum; at the deceleration stage, the vacuum releases energy. And the most intriguing thing is that the vacuum can give back more energy than it previously received from us, because he himself has a huge reserve of energy. In this case, no violation of the law of conservation of energy occurs: how much energy the vacuum gives us, exactly how much energy we will receive from it. But due to the fact that the physical vacuum seems to us to be empty, it will seem to us that energy arises from nowhere. And such facts of apparent violation of the law of conservation of energy, when energy appears literally from emptiness, have long been known in physics (for example, with any resonance such enormous energy is released that the resonating object may even collapse).
Circular movement is also a type of uneven movement even with constant speed, because in this case, the position of the velocity vector in space changes. Consequently, such a movement deforms the surrounding physical vacuum, which reacts to this by creating resistance forces in the form centrifugal forces: they are always directed so as to straighten the trajectory of movement and make it straight when there is no vacuum deformation. And in order to overcome centrifugal forces (or to maintain the vacuum deformation caused by rotation), it is necessary to spend energy, which goes into the vacuum itself.
Now we can return to the phenomenon of the light bulb glowing. For it to work, there must be an electric generator in the circuit (even if there is a battery, it was still once charged from the generator). The rotation of the electric generator rotor deforms the structure of the adjacent physical vacuum, centrifugal forces arise in the rotor, and the energy to overcome these forces goes from the primary turbine or other source of rotation into the physical vacuum. As for the movement of electrons in an electrical circuit, this movement occurs under the influence of centrifugal forces created by vacuum in a rotating rotor. When electrons enter the filament of a light bulb, they intensely bombard the ions crystal lattice, and they begin to fluctuate sharply. During such oscillations, the structure of the physical vacuum is again deformed, and the vacuum reacts to this by emitting light quanta. Since the vacuum itself is a type of matter, the previously noted contradiction of the appearance of matter out of nowhere is removed: one form of matter (light radiation) arises from its other variety (physical vacuum). The electrons themselves do not disappear in such a process and are not transformed into something else. Therefore, as many electrons enter the light bulb through one wire, exactly the same number will exit through the other. Naturally, the energy of the quanta is also taken from the physical vacuum, and not from the electrons entering the filament. The energy itself electric current in the circuit does not change and remains constant.
Thus, for the lamp to glow, it is not the electrons themselves that are needed, but sharp vibrations of the ions of the metal crystal lattice. Electrons play only the role of an instrument that causes the ions to vibrate. But the tool can be replaced. And in the experiment with one wire, this is exactly what happens. In Nikola Tesla's famous experiment on transmitting energy through one wire, such an instrument was the internal alternating electric field of the wire, which constantly changed its intensity and thereby caused the ions to oscillate. Therefore, the expression “transfer of energy over one wire” in this case is not successful, even erroneous. No energy was transmitted through the wire; energy was released in the light bulb itself from the surrounding physical vacuum. This is the reason why the wire itself did not heat up: it is impossible to heat an object if energy is not supplied to it.
As a result, a rather tempting prospect emerges sharp decline the cost of constructing power lines. Firstly, you can get by with one wire instead of two, which immediately reduces capital costs. Secondly, instead of relatively expensive copper, you can use any cheapest metal, even rusty iron. Thirdly, you can reduce the wire itself to the thickness of a human hair, and leave the strength of the wire unchanged or even increase it by enclosing it in a sheath of durable and cheap plastic (by the way, this will also protect the wire from precipitation). Fourthly, due to the reduction in the total mass of the wire, it is possible to increase the distance between the supports and thereby reduce the number of supports for the entire line. Is this really possible? Of course it's real. If only there was the political will of the leadership of our country, the scientists would not let us down.
