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Aug 1, 2011

And He Finished His Pepsi And Said "Let There Be Light!"

Now THIS is innovation.

The fine folks at MIT put on their thinking caps and came up with this brilliantly simple way of bringing indoor lighting to villages with no electricity.  By filling a one liter plastic bottle with water and pacing it in a hole specially cut into the roof of a house, the sunlight refracts through the water and gives off the equivalent light of a 60W incandescent bulb.  Add a little bleach to keep bacteria from forming and clouding up the water and you've got a light source that will last you up to five years.

Sadly Reuters is stingy with their embedding, so click it here to see the "Liter Of Light" in action.

Here's my favorite part of this story: anyone could have come up with this solution.  Seriously, if given a little time and focus, a fourth grader could've figured this out.  The world needs more of this type of innovation; simple solutions to serious problems.  On that note, I was recently able to witness a day of really excellent TED talks and I'll be putting up videos from some of my favorites in the coming days and weeks.  Stay tuned.

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