Current Events

Glowing Trees
Nov 11. 2010
Darren Quick
Gizmag

As soon as post-doctor Yen-Hsun Su of the Research Center for Applied Science (RCAS), Academia Sinica, Taiwan, finds out that nano particles of gold when injected into trees make the leaves luminescent. He thinks about replacing lamps we have now with glowing trees. LED lights use phosphor powder to run and the powder is highly toxic, is extremely expensive, and pollutes. But if we took trees and made all their leaves luminescent and replace the LED lights with trees, it would help CO2 emissions go down and we wouldn't have to harm humans with toxic phosphor powder and trees would last longer.

Basically when you inject gold nano particles into trees, their leaves the gold nanoparticles can produce a blue-violet fluorescence that triggers a red emission of the surrounding chlorophyll and makes a sort of purplish light. post doctor Yen-Hsun Su tested this new development on the Bacopa Caroliniana and it made a purple light that made the tree look purple. I chose this article because I gave gizmag my school gmail adress so every day it sends me a new article about some interesting technology. This time it sent me a article that really caught my eye. I mean, who's heard of glowing trees that would replace street lamps? So I decided to do my current events on it.

2 comments:

  1. Wow! That is super cool! What is your opinion on Glowing Trees? Would you replace street lamps for these trees?

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  2. great article, that's really cool, this scientist found a way to stop some of the pollution and reduce Co2 emissions.

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