Effective use of natural sunlight in a habitat.

On 30/06/07, Xenophile wrote:
> Indeed, with computer control, it would be possible to cover the whole
> range top with fiber ends, and turn on the ones you need. Each fiber
> should also carry, say, a quarter watt of red light, so that it's
> obvious which ones are on. Then, if you set a 15 cm pan on the stove,
> fibers can light up underneath those 177 cm2 AND NOWHERE ELSE. How
> much heat is delivered to the pan depends on how many fibers light up
> (individual fibers can simply be on/off). Set a 40 cm skillet on the
> stove? The fibers under that skillet's 1257 cm2 light up. The rest of
> the stove stays cool (unless of course there are pots sitting on other
> parts of it). Even the oven could use piped-in infrared light (though
> I'd like it to also have a magnetron, so it can double as a microwave
> oven you should have two of these).

So, what you're saying is that using hundreds of fibers each of which
carries an intensity of 8MW/m^2 of light (about 8000x more intense
than direct sunlight) should be used to heat saucepans.

Hey here's an idea: no.

Me, I'm funny, I like being able to see, and my eyes have enough
trouble with direct sunlight focused on my retina. Something 8000x
more intense focused there by the lens of my eye? Well, that boiling
popping sound you get when your aqueous humour boils always bugs me.
So my habitat is not planning any such installation, any time soon. Is
that OK with you? Cos it's OK with me.

--
-Ian Woollard

"I think we all would have been a lot happier if they hadn't landed a
man on the moon. Then we'd go: 'They can't make a prescription bottle
top that's easy to open? I'm not surprised they couldn't land a man on
the moon. Things make perfect sense to me now.' "