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Project Summary
| Difficulty | 6 |
| Time required | Short (several days) |
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| * Note: This is an abbreviated project idea, without notes to start your background research or a procedure for how to do the experiment. You can identify abbreviated project ideas by the asterisk at the end of the title. If you want a project idea with full instructions, please pick one without an asterisk. |
Abstract
In the U.S., lighting homes and businesses accounts for 22% of all electric power consumption (Raloff, 2006). That's $55 billion worth of electricity, or the output of 100 large power plants (Raloff, 2006). How much energy could be saved by switching home lighting from incandescent to more efficient fluorescent lights? Conduct a survey to find out what types of lighting are used in homes in your area. Come up with an estimate of how many light fixtures are used in an average home, what types of light source (regular incandescent, halogen, fluorescent). Do background research to find out the relative efficiency of different types of lighting. How much energy could be saved by replacing incandescent lights with more efficient alternatives? Taking into account the cost of the lamps, how much money would be saved (if any)? You might also want to look into new lighting technologies like LEDs (Raloff, 2006; NGLIA, 2005). Could future light sources offer even more savings? (Idea from Langiewicz, M.T., 2004)Bibliography
- Langiewicz, M.T., 2004. "How To Eliminate the Energy Crisis in California," California State Science Fair Abstract [accessed June 20, 2006] http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2004/Projects/J0819.pdf.
- NGLIA, 2005. "Changing the Light Paradigm," Next Generation Lighting Industry Alliance [accessed June 20, 2006] http://www.nglia.org/.
- Raloff, J., 2006. "Illuminating Changes: Conventional Lightbulbs May Soon Be Obsolete," Science News 169(May 20): 314.
Variations
- For more science project ideas in this area of science, see Energy & Power Project Ideas.
Last edit date: 2007-01-02 19:37:46
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