A couple of interesting, bright points I recently stumbled across. Shared for your amusement, and in hopes that someone will post something equally random and cool.
Electricity-free water bottle light bulb. Damned simple, and clever.
A random flickr pic that caught my eye.
I kinda like the ‘Urban Ghillie Suit’ idea
Wow! That water bottle light thing is NOT a wind-up! It is a real thing! Whoever came up with that deserves some kind of really really clever bloke award. Amazing!
Yeah, I really like this design for a number of reasons, but mostly cos it improves the lives of so many people below the poverty line.
Yeah, I really like this design for a number of reasons, but mostly cos it improves the lives of so many people below the poverty line.[/quote]
Absolutely. What I find even more interesting is to look at the utter, utter simplicity of it, marvel that nobody has come up with such a thing in the past, and try to imagine what other life-changing things are sitting right under our noses.
AAAARGH! The boggling! The BOGGLING! Its interrupting my synapses!
I can’t wait to get home so I can see the video.
Sorry Doc. What it is, is a Filipino eco-guy who has devised a system in which they basically take an empty liter bottle of coke, fill it with water and a little bleach (the bleach stops algae from forming) and insert it halfway into a little hole cut in the roof of a shanty hut, giving 55-60 watts of light.
Here’s another link, doc.
isanglitrongliwanag.org/
(I quite like the faux umbrella pic too.)
I like that. You could use it a lot of places to save energy.
Has anyone here ever invented anything or come up with their own idea? I have thought and made plans for something which would help me on a day to day basis - a very simple idea which uses existing technology. However, I’m not sure how to go ahead with it.
I have also come up with a solution for something which may help the aviation industry, but I have no idea how to market it. Plus, I can’t understand why nobody has thought of it before, which probably means that my idea is a load of rubbish.
[quote=“Super Hans”]Has anyone here ever invented anything or come up with their own idea? I have thought and made plans for something which would help me on a day to day basis - a very simple idea which uses existing technology. However, I’m not sure how to go ahead with it.
I have also come up with a solution for something which may help the aviation industry, but I have no idea how to market it. Plus, I can’t understand why nobody has thought of it before, which probably means that my idea is a load of rubbish.[/quote]
I have. Well, come up with a couple of ace ideas. Politburo schooled me in what pursuing them would cost, and that was the end of that.
There are lots of new ideas every day that nobody thought of before. A FOAF came up with a new paint tray for professional housepainters that made him quite a bit of money.
I don’t see anything special about it, other than that it mimicks a light bulb in appearance. Empty bottle would do just as well. Any translucent sheet of material can also serve the purpose. Look at how much work they put into making and installing those “bulbs”. Definitely not economical. Back in the old days, many decades ago, my house had something similar, called skylight.
If a skylight would do as well, then I don’t imagine people would be praising this ‘bright idea’. So perhaps there’s something to it. (Edit: I should mention that I am not able to see the video) For instance, the water in the tube-shaped bottle may be conducting the light better than an empty bottle would, that is, like a short, thick fiber optic segment. You’d have to try it to see which works better. As for work making and installing them, that hardly seems significant, and there’s no real cost to the materials either.
Sorry Doc. What it is, is a Filipino eco-guy who has devised a system in which they basically take an empty liter bottle of coke, fill it with water and a little bleach (the bleach stops algae from forming) and insert it halfway into a little hole cut in the roof of a shanty hut, giving 55-60 watts of light.[/quote]
Wait . . . wat?
People have been putting light pipes into ceilings for hundreds of years.
I just looked at that second website, and it is absolutely retarded. Install a million 2L plastic bottles in third-world roofs? Let the third-worlders do it themselves. Surely they’re not so stupid-and-lazy that they can’t do it on their own if they want to.
I once “invented” a pole with an attachment on the end for cleaning deal leaves and gunk out of roof gutters without needing a ladder. Then I found that someone had already thought of the idea and similar poles were being sold at the local Home Depot.
Isn’t that EXACTLY what they’re doing? “Retarded?” Why not ask the granny in the video who now has light in her shack if SHE thinks its “retarded?”
LPeterC, did you actually watch the video in which the guy explains how it works so much better than a simple empty bottle or skylight?
Isn’t that EXACTLY what they’re doing? “Retarded?” Why not ask the granny in the video who now has light in her shack if SHE thinks its “retarded?”
[/quote]
Did you read the webpage?
isanglitrongliwanag.org/
It’s a begging site, asking people to “Help MyShelter Foundation Bring Light to More Filipino Families.”
How difficult is it to cut a hole in the roof and stick a 2L bottle through it? Do they really have to hire workers and buy bottles? Aren’t there enough empty 2L bottles being dumped into landfills to satisfy their needs?
“Take part in Lighting the Million by sponsoring solar bottle lights”?
It’s nothing more than the usual “oh, these poor fucking stupid third-worlders can’t do anything for themselves, send us money so we can fly there to bring them food and clothing and mosquito netting and condoms and skylights for their tin shacks and mud huts” story. I mean, holy crap, a mosquito net at least requires some manufacturing facility to crank the things out before they can get donated or sold, but empty plastic bottles are a blight on the landscape already.
Isn’t that EXACTLY what they’re doing? “Retarded?” Why not ask the granny in the video who now has light in her shack if SHE thinks its “retarded?”
[/quote]
Did you read the webpage?
isanglitrongliwanag.org/
It’s a begging site, asking people to “Help MyShelter Foundation Bring Light to More Filipino Families.”
How difficult is it to cut a hole in the roof and stick a 2L bottle through it? [/quote]
Difficult enough, I suppose, for people with nothing. Still, nobody’s twisting your arm. Sneer all you want. I don’t care. Its a good idea, well-executed, improving the lives of the poorest of the poor, in my opinion. You disagree? Fine.
Difficult enough, I suppose, for people with nothing. Still, nobody’s twisting your arm. Sneer all you want. I don’t care. Its a good idea, well-executed, improving the lives of the poorest of the poor, in my opinion. You disagree? Fine.[/quote]
I don’t disagree that it’s a useful idea. I’m just saying that a website begging for assistance to help the world’s poor shove a plastic bottle through their ceilings is moderately ridiculous.
They built the houses themselves, after all. Mostly tin shacks, if you look at the photos. If they accomplished that, they can make a hole in the roof too, without help from the godlike brainiacs at MIT who came up with the light-bottle idea, and who apparently think that cutting a hole in sheet metal takes similar engineering knowhow.