Hi Everyone, The 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics has just been announced: It goes to Isamu Akasaki and Hiroshi Amano of Nagoya University, Japan and Shuji Nakamuraat of the University of California, Santa Barbara. They won for work that is technologically subtle but readily appreciated and of significant impact for the world: The invention of energy efficient LEDs -- light emitting diodes -- that produce blue light. Until the cited work, LEDs had been able to emit red light and green light. But as Isaac Newton knew, to produce white light, you need to combine red, green and blue. Yet, it proved technologically challenging to create blue LEDs. This years Nobel prize, goes to three scientists who surmounted the obstacles and invented blue LEDs. If you have a smart phone with a flashlight app, when you turn it on -- and see a bright white light -- you are making use of this years Nobel-prize winning work. And the brightness you see is one of the reasons the work is so important. Electrical lighting accounts for a significant part of the worlds electrical consumption. LEDs are far more efficient than incandescent bulbs and environmentally safer than fluorescent lights that use mercury. So, compared with the prize-winning work of earlier years, this years prize focuses on an invention of great importance to the world as opposed to an abstract/foundational discovery. The Nobel-prize committee emphasized that this is very much in the spirit of Alfred Nobels original vision for the prize. Congratulations to the three new Nobel Laureates. --BG
Posted on: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 10:24:11 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015