Weight and See


Two British designers discover a way to turn dirt into light 

For the world’s poor, sometimes the ground they're living on is all they have. But two London designers with a brilliant idea have turned dirt and stones into something precious: light.

The project began about six years ago, when the charity SolarAid challenged Jim Reeves and Martin Riddiford to design a low-cost, solar-powered light source as an alternative to kerosene.

Between 1.3 and 3 billion people use kerosene lamps for lighting, even though the effects are potentially life-threatening. The World Bank estimates that 780 million women and children around the world inhale a volume of smoke emanating from kerosene lamps equivalent to smoking two packets of cigarettes a day. The fumes can cause eye infections and cataracts, and overturned lamps are an important cause of burns and fires. Furthermore, the cost of kerosene is a poverty trap, with the fuel consuming up to 30 percent of some families’ incomes.

As they brainstormed over solar alternatives, the designers struggled with the inevitability of batteries, which are both costly and inefficient. And yet—how else to make solar energy last through the night?

It occurred to them that gravity, unlike sunlight, is available 24 hours a day............Read more

 

Source: Business Line


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