Techotic

A student at Virginia Tech has invented a lamp that runs on nothing more than gravity, the student, Clay Moulton from Springfield, Virginia, conceived this new lighting method for his masters thesis.

The lamp called the Gravia won a prestigious 2^nd prize in the Greener Gadgets Design Competition in New York. Conceptual drawings of the new lamp show, a long column around 4 feet tall made of acrylic, when ‘switched on’ the whole column will glow.

Electric Power for the lamp will be generated by a spinning rotor, which will slowly allow mass to fall, and the energy that results from this action will light ten powerful LED’s that will light up the acrylic lens, this will give off a diffused light.

The new lamp is not only completely silent, it is also completely electricity free; it does not have a power cord, and does not plug in to the mains or even use a battery.

The lamp is capable of an output of up to 800 lumens which is the equivalent of an incandescent 40 W bulb, to activate the lamp you simply move weights from the bottom of the lamp to the top, the mechanism turns over and the weights are placed in what is called a mass sled.

Very slowly and silently the sled slides down the lamp and a few seconds later the LEDs light up, illuminating the room. The inventor compared the action to winding, a grandfather clock; he believes that the lamps mechanism should have a lifetime in excess of incredible 200 years if used for 8 hours daily.

He added that the LEDs give off an unusual blue tinted light that will alter over time, the acrylic will develop a slight yellowing, which will alter the colour to the more natural white light we are use to.

Not surprisingly he has patented his invention, and if it proves commercially viable he could change the way we light our homes, not to mention drastically reducing our electricity bills.