{"id":165,"date":"2013-01-17T20:19:50","date_gmt":"2013-01-17T20:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/notechmagazine.com\/2013\/01\/how-to-design-more-powerful-gravity-powered-lights.html"},"modified":"2016-05-21T20:15:01","modified_gmt":"2016-05-21T18:15:01","slug":"how-to-design-more-powerful-gravity-powered-lights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/2013\/01\/how-to-design-more-powerful-gravity-powered-lights.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Gravity Powered&#8221; Lights (and How to Make Them More Powerful)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/gravity-powered-lights.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-3165\" src=\"http:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/gravity-powered-lights-500x334.jpg\" alt=\"gravity powered lights\" width=\"500\" height=\"334\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/gravity-powered-lights-500x334.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/gravity-powered-lights.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/deciwatt.org\/#gravitylight\" target=\"_blank\">GravityLight<\/a> uses a sack of sand or stones to gradually pull a piece of rope through a dynamo mechanism which generates electricity to power an LED. It is a cheaper and more sustainable option than a solar powered light, which requires not only a solar panel but also a battery. The product is aimed at the developing world and its makers <a href=\"http:\/\/www.indiegogo.com\/projects\/282006\" target=\"_blank\">raised 400,000 dollars<\/a> at indiegogo.<\/p>\n<p>The technology could be further improved by including pulley mechanisms that were used to operate human powered cranes and lifting devices in pre-industrial times. This would allow a person <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lowtechmagazine.com\/2010\/03\/history-of-human-powered-cranes.html\" target=\"_blank\">to lift heavier weights and thus power more powerful lights<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>To be precise, the light is not powered by gravity. It is muscle-powered, while gravity stores the energy and fulfills the role of a battery. <span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">Hat tip to <\/span>Bernd Vleugels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The GravityLight uses a sack of sand or stones to gradually pull a piece of rope through a dynamo mechanism which generates electricity to power an LED. It is a cheaper and more sustainable option than a solar powered light, which requires not only a solar panel but also a battery. The product is aimed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,314,96,315],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3166,"href":"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/3166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.notechmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}