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Brilliant light for developing world is powered by gravity
Brilliant light for developing world is powered by gravity | DVICENot everyone has access to electricity all the time. And not everyone has access to chemical energy or solar energy or nuclear energy all the time. But everyone on Earth has access to gravitational energy whenever they need it. The problem has always been making gravity useful for something, but this gravity-powered light manages to do exactly that.
Essentially, this light (called GravityLight) operates just like a grandfather clock: there's a weight attached to a cable, and as the weight descends, it pulls the cable through a mechanism to extract energy from gravity-induced motion. You recharge the clock by winding it, putting energy into the system by using mechanical effort to lift the weight up against gravity. And there's a reason why people still have grandfather clocks: it's a very simple, very dependable system that's super easy to recharge.
GravityLight is designed to replace kerosene lanterns throughout the developing world. There are lots of reasons why doing this is a good idea: kerosene is bad for humans (having kerosene lamps burning in a house is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day), bad for the environment (it produces 244 million tons of CO2 yearly), and bad for finances, sucking up between 10% and 20% of a developing household's income. The key to making something to replace kerosene is simplicity, dependability, and cheapitude. GravityLight has all three of these things going for it.