Technology

59388 readers

3706 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

936

Why It Was Almost Impossible to Make the Blue LED (youtu.be)

submitted 9 months ago by Whirling_Cloudburst to c/technology

201 comments fedilink hide all child comments

The blue LED was supposed to be impossible—until a young engineer proposed a moonshot idea.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] JATtho 30 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Maybe not in a flashlight, but the scientific industry would be very pleased with them. Sterilize water and all surfaces in a second? Flash with 200nm light.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Handheld battery powered X-ray devices exist and are widely available. I used to work with those. In Germany you need a permit to operate them. https://www.thermofisher.com/order/catalog/product/de/en/XL2

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

What’s wrong with the current UV tubes? Sure, the smaller ones take about 5-10 W to get the job done, so maybe an LED version would be more efficient. If you’re using UV to keep a massive pool clean, then you’re obviously going to be need more of those bulbs, and they can add up to hundreds of watts quite easily. Is that really a big problem though? Having a pool isn’t cheap, so electricity spent on UV probably isn’t going to be your main concern. Making it cheaper is always welcome, but are UV tubes really that big of a problem?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I mean they aren't instant and have to be within a fairly short distance of the thing you want to sterilize in order to work because they are absorbed by the air. Something like a pool would be practically impossible as water also absorbs UV and a pool is too big to penetrate all the way through just from the sides or bottom. It only works for drinking water because you pass said water through a tube that must be fairly narrow.

Oh yeah and an X-ray could sterilize all the way through an object, not just the surface. Very useful for making things like microwave meals.