Laboratory Lighting
Whilst serving as Equipment Technician at the New Mexico Consortium from 2013-2017 I assisted some of the top Bio-Chem researchers in the world with the goal of pushing forwards algae as a viable biofuel solution. At one point I worked with Nobel Prize winning scientist Dr. Geoff Waldo.
Plants, algae, bacterial cultures, and fungus were all studied in depth as researchers sought to gather information on a mystery as great as space or the ocean floors: microbiology. Microbes are present nearly everywhere in our world, packed by the billion in every square inch, and they elusively dictate the environment and biological systems they inhabit. People do not run the world, microbes do.
Specialized lighting was required for experimental needs. In many cases we wanted to simulate extreme climate conditions upwards of 3000 micromoles of photon flux density. Researchers wanted light but not heat, so creative heat dissipation engineering was required.
Below are some pictures and a few details about the lights I constructed:
High power red and green lights for experimental usage. Red light is 680 nano-meters (near IR), Green is 517 nm. Notice the welding chillers ; here water is pumped through the 80/20 lighting fixtures thus taking away heat from the structure and the high-power LEDs. Operates like a car radiator.
Custom 3000 umol far red lighting in controlled incubation chamber.
Lighting whilst under construction.
Testing on workbench
These lights are more dangerous than looking directly at the sun. For the purpose of loosening specific chemical molecular bonds, these lights were ultimately mounted in a UL certified black box in which a researcher would slide their petri dish. This method of cleaving molecules with light is called photo-chemistry.
Fun relic of an experimental set-up request put forth by my friend and co-worker Kay. I actually pulled this off, and we had piezo-electric transducers haptically stimulating algae cultures in standing bottles. Researchers concluded that the air bubbles created by the induction were a more likely cause for culture growth than the tone of the sound frequency input.