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| Sal Ammoniac:
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on May 19, 2021, 04:15:49 pm ---The ability to stay up after dusk and keep going until dawn, whether that's good or bad, is primarily down to lights. --- End quote --- So what do we say to nocturnal animals that depend on darkness to hunt (or avoid predators)? Fuck you, my need to party till dawn overrides your need to live? |
| Zero999:
--- Quote from: dunkemhigh on May 19, 2021, 04:15:49 pm ---I ain't gainsaying you, but this kind of thing doesn't help your cause: --- Quote --- people survived fine before lights --- End quote --- People survived fine before cars. People survived fine before mobile phones. People survived fine before landline phones. People survived fine before post. People survived fine before concrete. ... The are LOTS of things people survived fine before. Some of them are actually useful and/or made life better. The ability to stay up after dusk and keep going until dawn, whether that's good or bad, is primarily down to lights. --- End quote --- But all of the above mostly improve health and over all quality of life. Having too much light at night time, especially the shorter wavelengths is unhealthy and disrupts sleep. I have dark brown curtains and another later of black cloth sewn behind them to block out most of the light at night time. Streets should be minimally lit, preferably with a low colour temperature to avoid disrupting sleep. |
| PlainName:
--- Quote ---So what do we say to nocturnal animals --- End quote --- Say whatever you want, but don't plonk your assumptions on me - I didn't express one way or the other whether doing that stuff is good, bad or ugly, just noted the fact that light is the enabler. |
| SeanB:
Funny thing is the mercury vapour lamp, before they went to the rubbish low mercury stuff, was pretty much the nearly everlasting lamp, in that in a street lighting application you could simply do a group relamp every 10 years, and in the interim you might have 5-10% of the lamps fail over that period, with the majority still providing around 70% of the light output after the 10 years had passed. You find plenty of 125W MV lamps still in residential use in the USA, on dusk to dawn, and probably still there since the 1980's, providing light to old buildings all over the USA, and not likely to be changed out till they fail. With the original GE or Westinghouse lamp in them, which stayed basicaly the same since the late 1960's when they had figured out how to make a robust lamp, and before the MBA take over which wanted a 5 year life in them, so they cut the area of emitter, cut the arc tube length and cu the mercury dose down. In street light use it is easy to recycle, you have enough lamps, enough volume all at once, and the crews going out with the right packaging to protect the removed lamps as they replace them, and a box as well. Easy to simply get them, crush and sort into the glass, wash off the phosphor for reuse, wash out the mercury with the phosphor, separate the metals, and do 3 melts to separate out the lead solder, the steel wire and finally sinter the tungsten back into wire. |
| james_s:
125W mercury is not a size we had in the USA other than a few cheap imported lights near the end of the mercury era. The classic mercury yard light/barn light used a 175W lamp and the good ones did indeed last a very long time. My grandfather installed one in the late 70s and it ran dusk till dawn and was still working on the original lamp when we sold the house in 2016 after my grandmother passed away. Close to 40 years on the same lamp, and it still looked as bright as a new one. I never climbed up and looked closely at the lamp but I suspect it was one of the GE Bonus Line lamps that used an electrode formulation resulting in white deposits rather than blackening the arc tube. |
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