River Glow project detects pollution with style

We've seen pigeons that monitor pollution and cement that eats pollution, but for eye-catchiness and do-goodedness, it's tough to beat Soo-in Yang and David Benjamin's River Glow project, which provides a light show as it keeps an eye on water quality. Built with a budget of $1,000, the current bathtub-bound prototype system consists of an LED connected to uncoated fiber optic strands, which gets triggered when the pH sensor detects changes in water quality. What's more, the whole thing's apparently powered by a single AA battery, which is recharged using floating strips of thin film photovoltaics. Presumably, that'd be scaled up before it gets let loose in some larger waterways (as seen above), although it's not clear when or if that'll happen.

[Via Inhabitat]

[jimmack @ Jun 14th 2007 12:41PM]

It's pretty! So finally there's a reward for the little people when our environments are poisoned.

[Rick Lyon @ Jun 14th 2007 12:56PM]

Absolutely brilliant. Not only tremendously important and completely necessary, it's rather ingenious design and negative impact on the environment is amazing. And it's pice isn't bad either.

[greatslack @ Jun 14th 2007 1:16PM]

Now let's get these into pools!

[SoreThumb @ Jun 14th 2007 1:27PM]

Does this fiber optic cable bug the fish that could (Somehow) live in this water? Thatd' be great to keep the river's denizens up at night instead of let them sleep :P