LED Product Is Great, But Let’s Understand the Science
Here’s a fantastic product that is quickly replacing the kerosene lamps that denizens of third-world countries are using for reading lights. It’s an LED lamp that’s powered the same way as a grandfather clock, i.e., with the chemical energy in the body of a human being who lifts a weight against the force of gravity, providing it with potential energy that is then converted into the energy required to run the device, in this case, a small current of electricity.
Sadly, the video gets this all wrong, claiming that the light “runs on gravity,” “doesn’t run on electricity,” and “doesn’t require any energy.”
My Facebook comment: This is a great idea, though it would be nice if the video didn’t contain gross errors in basic science. The light *does* require energy, and it *doesn’t* run on gravity. It runs on the energy it received from the guy who lifted it up against the force of gravity.
Craig,
Interesting gadgets, but the light produced is very dim and not terribly useful. Subsistence farmers tend to rise with the sun and sleep at night.
Like Trevor Baylis’s clockwork radio’s and other clever devices to help the poor and disadvantaged in third world nations, these products generally prove popular only with earnest donors. Many villagers actually resent their children attending school, reasoning that once educated the children will move to the city and the village will lose it best and brightest.
A neigbouring farmer moved to Australia from Zimbabwe during the war to end white rule. He tells of his experience in setting up a small scale electricity project for a remote and impoverished village. Assembling a bank of recycled lead acid car batteries, he wired up the village from scrap wiring and by using a number of bicycles and an old wind mill created a power source. All it took was 10 villagers to pedal for half an hour each day, and the whole village enjoyed 24 hour electricity.
Sadly, the village has not prospered and thirty 40 years later is still powered by kerosene. The old battery and wiring has long since failed due to lack of maintenance and the bicycles pillaged for spares parts. An American Church charity promised to build a school and provide a a diesel generator for the village, but the Mugabe government expressed disapproval as the villages belong to the wrong tribe.
But technology such as this may find specialized uses in the Western world.
Some people believe that encouraging education in the Third World is an important ingredient to increasing productivity and improving family planning.
Craig,
Yes indeed, as do I ! However, it’s not quite that simple. One of the great problems arising from a Western desire to assist the Third world is assuming the local people and culture have the same aspirations, ambitions and desires as those living in the West.
The ‘Ugly American’ 1958 novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer and their later novel ‘The Deceptive American’ , illustrated these problems.
Creating educated elites can be a burden for many third world nations.
No sane person is calling for “educated elites.”