Diodes

I just wrote  the post about the LED/LEC hybrid lights and I got to thinking that while I know that LED stands for “Light Emitting Diode” I have absolutely no clue what a diode is.  So I thought I would look up what a diode is.

According to McGraw Hill’s online Encyclopedia of Science and Technolgy, a diode is “a two-terminal electron device exhibiting a nonlinear current-voltage characteristic.“ 

Wonderful, . . . I have no clue what that means and reading the rest of McGraw Hill’s entry on diodes really has done little else to help me.  I gather that, more or less, a diode is a type of circuitry component used to pass a voltage.  It seems that different diodes are used to produce different effects (one being the light from an LED).

Yet another reason to be concerned about global warming

It seems like lately there is a new problem being suggested by the warming of our globe every week.  The idea of massive earthquakes being triggered as the ice sheets is not something that sounds very comforting to me, especially considering that earthquakes can cause other natural disasters such as tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.  This article in National Geographictoday discusses the research behind this unsettling possibility.  Not to be pessimistic but I have a feeling that we have already done sufficient damage to the earth as it is and we may be a bit to late to avoid some of these projected future consequences.  Still that does not mean that we should stop conservation efforts.  If we are lucky advances in technology and science plus the spread of environmental awareness will keep the world from falling apart altogether.

It is all about the lighting

For many of us it is hard to imagine living without electric lighting.  The light bulb has become such a staple of our culture that we really often overlook it all together.  And even though the lighting we use these days seems to be doing a pretty sufficient job scientists are still experimenting with ways of creating more energy efficient and longer lasting producers of illumination.  The latest in this quest is a hybrid between an LED (light emitting diode) and a LEC (light emitting elecrochemical cell) that is described in this article from Discovery News.  The implications of a new lighting source are actually quite broad especially in a day and age where concerns of energy conservation are a big deal.

All quiet on the science front?

No, not really, I’ve just had an unusually busy day at work today.  I’ll try and put some posts up before the end of the day but can’t make any promises because I’ve got a project that needs finishing up this afternoon.  I wish I had my Internet up and running at home because then I’d be able to post some after work.  No such luck though.  Okay!  Back to the front lines of public library service!