3 ms·
When we were building out an office that only had a few windows I went looking for, and found one of these. Unfortunately it’s $60k instead of $2k. According to
by apinstein 7y ago
When we were building out an office that only had a few windows I went looking for, and found one of these. Unfortunately it’s $60k instead of $2k. According to reviewers that saw it, it’s amazing.
Apparently it uses some nanoscale material that produces (mimics?) Rayleigh scattering.
https://www.vox.com/2015/2/18/8060673/skylight-artificial-light https://www.vox.com/2015/2/18/8060673/skylight-artificial-li...
- BenoitEssiambre 7y agoI don't think the trick is the Rayleigh scattering, I think it's the parallel rays. Notice how all the pictures have well defined shadows of parallel rays?
- raziel2701 7y agoI started to look into this and from a brief readings of the patents it seems that the magic sauce is Rayleigh scattering by shining an LED light onto a sandwich of two transparent panels and a solid layer of silica aerogel. I couldn't find the thickness of the aerogel layer, which will determine if you get more blue or red light out of the sandwich. It's quite ingenious, the aerogel consists of silica nanoparticles with a size distribution smaller than the wavelength of the light, leading to Rayleigh scattering to dominate. The non-uniformity of the aerogel structure is what gives it the more nuanced lighting, it lets a bit of yellow light, a bit of this and that, making a non-monochromatic source that resembles sunlight very well.
- lahwran 7y agohmm, that explains the color, but it doesn't explain the coherence. it is cool though, aerogel makes a lot of sense to use for this.