Posted on 02/22/2008 11:27:17 AM PST by blam
Gravity Powered Lamp, Designed By Student, Provides As Much Light As 40 Watt Bulb
The Gravia LED lamp will be powered by gravity. It will be about 4 feet high and the entire column will glow. (Credit: Clay Moulton)
ScienceDaily (Feb. 22, 2008) — A Virginia Tech student has created a floor lamp powered by gravity.
Clay Moulton of Springfield, Va., who received his Master of Science in Architecture with a concentration in industrial design from the College of Architecture and Urban Studies in 2007, created the lamp as a part of this master’s thesis. The LED lamp, named Gravia, has just won second place in the Greener Gadgets Design Competition as part of the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York City.
Concept illustrations of Gravia depict an acrylic column a little over four feet high. The entire column glows when activated. The electricity is generated by the slow fall of a mass that spins a rotor. The resulting energy powers 10 high-output LEDs that fire into the acrylic lens, creating a diffuse light. The operation is silent and the housing is elegant and cord free – completely independent of electrical infrastructure.
The light output will be 600-800 lumens – roughly equal to a 40 watt incandescent bulb over a period of four hours.
To "turn on" the lamp, the user moves weights from the bottom to the top of the lamp. An hour-glass like mechanism is turned over and the weights are placed in the mass sled near the top of the lamp. The sled begins its gently glide back down and, within a few seconds, the LEDs come on and light the lamp, Moulton said. “It’s more complicated than flipping a switch but can be an acceptable, even enjoyable routine, like winding a beautiful clock or making good coffee,” he said.
Moulton estimates that Gravia’s mechanisms will last more than 200 years, if used eight hours a day, 365 days a year. “The LEDs, which are generally considered long-life devices, become short-life components in comparison to the drive mechanisms,” he said.
The acrylic lens will be altered by time in an attractive fashion, Moulton said. “The LEDs produce a slightly unnatural blue-ish light. As the acrylic ages, it becomes slightly yellowed and crazed through exposure to ultraviolet light,” he said. “The yellowing and crazing will tend to mitigate the unnatural blue hue of the LED light. Thus, Gravia will produce a more natural color of light with age.”
He predicted that the acrylic will begin to yellow within 10 to 15 years when Gravia is used in a home’s interior room.
A patent is pending on the Gravia. To learn more, contact Jackie Reed of Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties Inc. at 540-443-9217.
About the design competition
Greener Gadgets partnered with Core77 to seek out design innovations for greener electronics. This competition engaged established design firms, emerging designers, and design students to come up with new and innovative solutions to address the issues of energy, carbon footprint, health and toxicity, new materials, product lifecycle, and social development. Top entries were showcased live at the conference by a distinguished panel and the audience after two rounds of rigorous pre-judging. Entries were evaluated on the following criteria: innovation, clarity of design, originality, form, and presentation.
Adapted from materials provided by Virginia Tech.
21st century lava lamp?
The first place invention must be pretty nifty if this is what came in second.
It’s an elegantly simplistic device. I like it too. Forty wats isn’t much light though.
Clever!
Cool beans. Hats off to VPI Engineering.
Attractive. Looks “arts and crafts” somehow...
I like it too! When he gets it so I can just turn the device over, like a hour glass the he has a winner!
It’s American ingenuity like this that’s going to help us kick our obeisance to the Muzzie oil barons.
The title is highly misleading. The lamp is powered by the kinetic energy of the falling mass being turned into electrical energy, which in turn is powered by a human resetting it every 4 hours.
Or I could just flip a light switch instead of running around the house flipping over LED lava lamps.
At 70+, I need at least 40 watts to tie my shoes and
3 times that to read anything!!
More info here.
Lava lamp.
It’s NOT gravity powered.
It’s human powered, just like having to take your sled back to the top of the hill.
Journalists never state anything technical correctly.
Reminds me of the LED flashlights that you shake for 20 seconds and then they are suppose to give you 30 minutes of light.
More than enough for the cabin - where can I buy one?
Go Hokies!
Interesting
(That's my alma mater!)
Light switches do not work, where there is no electrical grid.
I have one of those in my hurricane prepardness chest. It works suprisingly well.
Get three of them then...
3 X zero electricity is still zero.
It won’t be long evidently... I wouldn’t mind having one myself.
Not sure what is patentable here. Clocks have been powered this way for centuries.
The key to this this device is the LEDs which are very efficient no matter what the power source.
Yeah, but you have to enlist a bunch of pre-teen boys to power those things.
That looks interesting. It will be more interesting if the device can be made bright enough to read by.
Kind of like lighting your house with those glowing light sticks.
How about a wind-up lamp next?
That is pretty cool...
Would that be a grandfather or cuckoo clock?
Great concept. If they just replace the led’s with an 1157 auto bulb (tail light/brake light) this could be built cheaply and last a loooooong time.
You gotta be kidding me.... the gravity lamp got beat out by a regular old amp meter?
>>I like this device.<<
I do too - very elegant.
But its not actually powered by gravity - the potential energy comes from the human applied force of lifting the weight.
I've always wondered...what's a Hokie?
Does it have a plug in port to power an oxygen concentrator for emergency use during power outages?
This is for people who can’t sleep without the light. Also, people who read in the bed sometimes forget to turn off the light. The key functions as a switch and a timer. Wind-up to turn the light on before you go to bed. The light will stay on until the key winds back. You will come to know how many times you need to wind-up. Its main source of power comes from its powerful spring-driven generator. As the high carbon tensile steel spring unwinds, power is transferred to a small dynamo electric generator which produces enough electricity to power of the light.
LEDs are the future my FRiends.
Don't talk to me about prior art. The patent office doesn't pay much attention to it, so why should I? :-).
After looking at the first place "EnerJar" which is just a power meter similar to the already commercially available Kill-a-watt meter, I have to say that the lamp designers were robbed. The lamp is more innovative than the power meter.
I spent what I though was too much money (20 bucks) on one of those wind up lights at Brookstone or the like.
However I use the crap out of it as it is the only one in the house that works cause I always leave them on.
And if there is ever an intruder in the house I can use it as a weapon as it is pretty chunky too!
When mass produced they will get the price down to about ....................................................
Just a thought. What if you put it in an hourglass type holder where you just turned it over?
The patent process seems to have evolved into granting a patent for just about anything. While the design is attractive, I cannot see anything unique about the mechanism. Falling mass to turn a rotor to generate electricity to light a light seems like I recall that being done before.
Very nice!
Surprised that it is not mounted on trunnions, then just invert it to cycle?
He should mount it on a swivel, so the user can just flip it 180 degrees when needed. Would take about 3 seconds.
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