Nerdy Science Blog

I arrived at Melbourne last week.  I shifted to a new house, and I had no internet connection there.  I guess can’t online for the next couple of weeks.  I had to come all the way to the campus just to online (and also pick up newspapers).

Two days ago I read a news about Earth Hour 2008 from The Age.  It said that March 29, 2008, at 8pm, Melbourne will turn off the lights for an hour.  Melbourne will be a dark city for an hour on that day.  Melbourne has an interesting night life and it’s famed for that.  By putting off the light, this shows how serious Melbourne is on the issue of climate changing.

If you don’t stay in Melbourne and if your city is not participating in this Earth Hour 2008, please help yourself by switching off the lights for an hour.  I stayed outside Melbourne, and I signed up to join the act of Earth Hour.

(link)

The picture on the left is a lamp lit by gravity.  It is named “Gravia”.

This floor lamp was created by Clay Moulton, a Virginia Tech student.  The concept of Gravia is to move the weight in the lamp to allow the heavier weight goes on top, and let the weight slides down slowly.  This activate the lamp as the sliding mass spins a rotor, and the LEDs glows.  Other features of this lamp?  It is noise-free.  In other words, it works silently.  This device is also a really long-life one.  You can pass it to your children, grandchildren or even great grandchildren.  It is said that the mechanisms of Gravia can last more than 200 years (eight hours a day, 365 days a year).

Comparing to the switch, some lazy people might thinks that it’s very troublesome to move the lamp every certain period just to let it glow.  We can work on that, for example, making a device that turn the lamp after a certain time.

(news)