Street Lighting With Glowing Trees

Street Lighting With Glowing Trees

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Ever increasing day and night movement activities of mankind irrespective to their urban or rural base greatly need street lighting for their safe night movements all around. Electricity based street lighting facilities are an integral part of urban town planning but rural sector is of least concern in this respect. Presently, solar based street lighting systems are though providing some relief to rural masses but with their inherited disadvantages like cost & maintenance. Nanotechnology has shown the way to make trees glow when their leaves are implanted with nanoparticles to play the role of street lighting system.

Recently, Taiwanese researchers have come up with the elegant idea of replacing streetlights with trees, by implanting their leaves with gold nanoparticles. Implantation of leaves with gold nanoparticles causes the leaves to give off a red glow, lighting the road for passersby without the need for electric power. The natural chemical reactions in the tree itself with the addition of the gold particles creates a chemical reaction that produces bioluminescence much like deep sea creatures that produce light from their own bodies in an area where there is none. A tree is a living organism and must be capable of similar processes with the help of the gold nanoparticles.