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Craig Hill
Oracle of DelphiLight Up The World
January 3rd 2007 04:12
Children with LUTW LED Light
A Calgary electrical engineer and university professor has made it his mission to light up otherwise dark nights of the developing world's children. The University of Calgary professor, David Irvine-Halliday, wanted to make a difference in the lives of new friends he made during a visit to Nepal in 1997. Some locations in the mountainous nation were inaccessible to modern electrical power so after sunset, children could not read or complete homework assignments.
Irvine-Halliday making an LED light
"We went out to talk to [the father] & he said this is the first night in the entire lives of his five children they have been able to read at night," said Irvine-Halliday. "Now they're all literate; they just couldn't study because of the little kerosene lamps that they had."
With pedal power, a $10 rechargeable battery and a little help from a friend, one family's lives were truly illuminated.
Irvine-Halliday and his wife, along with some business colleagues, created the Light Up The World Foundation to bring practical and affordable illumination to those who need it around the world.
Since then, Light Up The World has provided lighting to 20,000 homes in such places as Nepal, Africa, South America, Afghanistan, South Asia and even to a remote Native Indian settlement in Northern British Columbia.
Tsunami Relief
And, there's no end in sight for the project as LUTW strives to illuminate the two billion homes without adequate lighting around the globe.
"That is our mandate," said Ken Robertson, Irvine-Halliday's business partner and co-founder of Light Up The World. "We want to lead the movement towards solid state lighting and to replace the fossil fuel burning, with a product that provides vastly more light and at the same time has incredible environmental and social benefits."
Did You Know?
LED = Light Emitting Diode
Solid state lighting technologies use LEDs. A diode is the simplest sort of semiconductor device. Broadly speaking, a semiconductor is a material with a varying ability to conduct electrical current.
Tiny, LEDs fabricated from layers of silicon and seeded with atoms of phosphorus, or germanium, arsenic and other rare-earth elements, exploit the quirky laws of quantum physics to transform electrons directly into photons of light, without heat. A cheap plastic reflector focuses the light into a conical beam that can be narrow and very bright, or wide and diffuse.
A diode restricts the flow of current to one direction: electricity enters from one side and exits out the other. In between, the current passes through a structure called a die. The die contains an area called the junction, where the actual light generation takes place. A contact in the center of the junction is attached to the incoming lead (the anode). As a current passes through the LED, the materials that make up the junction react, and light is emitted. By experimenting with different junction materials and package designs, LEDs are now bright enough to be considered for applications that traditionally use incandescent bulbs.
(Did You Know section from LUTW Technology & Applications page)
Please go to Light Up The World Foundation to learn more
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Comment by postmoderncritic
Postmodern Critic
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Padsoc
Thanks for sharing Light Up The World with us!
*Hugs*
Epiphanie
Comment by MelissaA
Fun Facts
Comment by pegasus
Poker Addict
A great big hug right back at you!
luv,
Peg
Hey, MelissaA,
One is a powerful number. Professor Irvine-Halliday & the schoolboy who thought of the 'Pay It Forward' idea are two inspirational examples of a single soul making a world of difference.
Cheers,
pegasus
Comment by MelissaA
Fun Facts
Comment by D. Armenta
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