Traditional and Modern Chinese Lantern: Reduce Light Pollutions

     The Lantern Festival may have originated during the Han era (206 BCE to 220 CE), when Buddhist monks would burn lanterns in honor of the Buddha on the 15th day of the lunar year. Later, the ceremony was embraced by the wider population and expanded throughout China and other regions of Asia. 

A legend about the festival's origins talks of the Chinese Emperor (You Di) becoming enraged at a village for slaughtering his goose. He intended to burn down the town, but he was foiled by a fairy who urged the inhabitants to light lanterns across the town on the scheduled day of doom. Because of all the brightness, the emperor imagined the town was already engulfed in flames. 

The town was spared, and in gratitude, The inhabitants have continued to memorialize the incident by waving colorful lanterns across the town on an annual basis.

During Chinese New year festival, the China town especially my hometown, Nakon Sawan province about 250 km north of Bangkok, decorates the whole town with Red Chinese lanterns. Nowadays the Chinese lantern is adapted to suit the modern lifestyle but remaining the traditional beauty. The incandescent lamp is used because it is cheap and its color looks like candle light however it creates a lot of light pollutions.

1. Too much light shine up to the sky and destroy the astronomical view

2. Too much glare to distrain people’s eyes

3.  Waste Energy

Materials:

Chinese Lantern

60 watts Incandescent Lamp (existing used)

5 watts LED Warm light bulb ( to save energy while maintaining the same illumination level as 60 watts Incandescent lamp)

Electric Wire and lamp socket

Translucent paper ( put at the bottom part and wrap around the light bulb to reduce glare)

Black poster paper ( cover on top to reduce the light to shine up to the sky and destroy the astronomical view and also to compensate the light level that was reduced due to glare reduction solution)

Tools:

Lux meter (to measure the illumination)

Power meter (to measure power taken by lamps)

Thermometer (to measure the ambient temperature impacted by lamps)

1. More Downlight less uplight

Illumination level Increased from 10 Lux to 15 Lux (improved 50%)

2. Reduce Glare

3. Save Energy, Reduce Heat, Maintain the Traditional Beauty

Power from 60 watts (0.06 kW) to 5 watts (0.00kW)

( couldn’t be seen at 3rd decimal because the power meter has too large to scale).

The ambient temperature is reduced from 38.2 celsius to 30.5 celsius to reduce heat to surrounding.

Conclusion

According to the test results, my design was a clear solution to solve those light pollution problems.

Limitations

More expensive for the LED compared to incandescent lamp so a lot of companies may not care about light pollution.

Color of the LED lamp doesn’t mirror the candle light perfectly.

It doesn’t impact that much for the daily light pollution because it is just the festivals, however it’s a strong first step that solves light pollution and in the future it should be able to apply to the daily applications.