11 Jun '08 04:49>
How efficient are fiber optics? Could solar energy collected in one place be efficiently transferred to a different climate..."pipe the sunlight" without changing it's form of energy at all?
Originally posted by uzlessMy answer is that light is so fast it would be impossible to catch it in there, but if you could do that, then maybe it could work.
Depends if Light travels as a wave or as a particle.
I considered lining the inside of a bottle with reflective glass, holding it up to the sun, somehow capping the bottle very fast, then taking the bottle into a dark room and taking the cap off to see if light would come out of the bottle.
Popular answer was that the light would dissipate into just heat.
Originally posted by AThousandYoungYou would need a completely reflective material, such that none of the light energy was absorbed.
My answer is that light is so fast it would be impossible to catch it in there, but if you could do that, then maybe it could work.
Originally posted by uzlessEven if you did have a perfectly reflective bottle you'd only capture an instant's worth of sunlight.
Depends if Light travels as a wave or as a particle.
I considered lining the inside of a bottle with reflective glass, holding it up to the sun, somehow capping the bottle very fast, then taking the bottle into a dark room and taking the cap off to see if light would come out of the bottle.
Popular answer was that the light would dissipate into just heat.
Originally posted by AThousandYoungBeing that the light is moving at the speed of, well, light...anything that is 'reflective enough' to hold light in a container so you can move it elsewhere would have to be perfectly reflective.
No, you'd need something reflective enough that it took time before all the light was absorbed.
Originally posted by forkedknightThat may be so, but I'd need to see some calculations to be convinced.
Being that the light is moving at the speed of, well, light...anything that is 'reflective enough' to hold light in a container so you can move it elsewhere would have to be perfectly reflective.
The required quantization for "reflective enough" may be asymtotic to "perfectly reflective", but I'm an engineer -- they're equivalent in real life.
Originally posted by FabianFnasExcellent answer. Thank you.
AThousandYoung didn't ask about trapping the light in a bottle. From where did the bottle came?
Is it possible to use glass fiber to move solar energy from one place to another? This was the question, wasn't it?
I say no, because sending signals through optical fibers has to be read, and re-sent in regular distances, in order to keep the signal from ...[text shortened]... ar distances, and then you lose the point of collecting it and sending it to a colder climate.
Originally posted by FabianFnasAlso, optical fibers are efficient only at one wavelength, my optical fiber wavelength is about 1.5 microns, way into the infrared band.
AThousandYoung didn't ask about trapping the light in a bottle. From where did the bottle came?
Is it possible to use glass fiber to move solar energy from one place to another? This was the question, wasn't it?
I say no, because sending signals through optical fibers has to be read, and re-sent in regular distances, in order to keep the signal from ...[text shortened]... ar distances, and then you lose the point of collecting it and sending it to a colder climate.