The 2014 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura — three scientists who helped develop blue light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, in the early 1990s.
Take it this way. The white light is made up of three colors – Red, Yellow & Blue – called the primary colours. When the three combine, what you get is the white light.
Red and Yellow LEDs had already been invented. The missing link was the Blue LED. This would complete the triangle to produce bright white light that could light up millions of homes for a number of years.
600 million Indians, by Planning Commission’s own admission, have no access to electricity, and LED may just be the answer. It beats the CFL and the bulb in several aspects :
- It lasts much much longer. Upto 5x longer than the CFL.
- While the bulb converts much of electric energy to heat, LEDs do not produce heat, only light . High efficiency.
- Unlike the CFL they do not contain mercury.
- They are conveniently small sized, and are used in an array. They can thus be created in various dimensions.
- They produce high munionsity light for the same amount of power consumed.
Click HERE to read further on why these dudes won the Nobel for the blue LED.
