William

For my project I came up with an idea to create a very energy efficient light bulb that would be powered by bioluminescence within bacteria. The purpose of this project was simple, to save energy and money to therefore decrease the amount of energy that the US uses every day to light buildings and such. In 2011, the US used 461 billion KWh to light the country. The bulb that I have created would be able to reduce this energy consumption and therefore help to lower the electrical imprint upon the Earth. Currently, there have been multiple different technologies that have been created to address this problem. For example, energy efficient incandescent bulbs use 17 less watts to power it self while still producing light levels similar to that off the 60-watt regular bulb. 15-Watt fluorescent lamps save 45 watts of power and the small LED lights use only 12 watts. Each one of these energy efficient bulbs leave a substantial decrease in the energy needed to power them but the idea that I have created would use only a fraction of a watt to be able to power itself. For my bulb, the design was simple. A bacteria would be engineered to glow when it felt the presence of a brown light. This bacteria would line the interior of a normal bulb and a tiny LED light that would produce a brown light would be placed in the middle of the bulb. This LED would be connected to the bulbs electrical points and would run off of the same energy that is directed from an outlet. A resistor would have to be placed on the wire leading to the LED to prevent the bulb from receiving to much energy and exploding. Also, the bacteria engineered would be created so that its population would always stay the same, or, as X amount of bacteria die, another X are reproduced by the bacteria. As energy flowed through the wire, it would light the bulb in the center of the bulb and the light produced by this bulb would cause the bacteria lining the bulb to glow producing light. The energy used to light the tiny bulb in the middle would only be a fraction of the energy needed to run an LED light. This would mean that the cost to run one of these lights for a hour would be a few cents at most. This would save the US billions of dollars a year in lighting costs. Although the idea would work well, there are a few issues. First, many people would be afraid of the bulb as the thought of bacteria would scare most people as they would believe they would get sick from the bacteria. This problem would be addressed by allowing a governmental organization to judge the safety of this technology and allow the public to understand that it is safe for people.