Because a Laotentzian distribution doesn’t look like a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution Even if you stack a forest of resonances next to one another, fluorescence and continuum emission are easily differentiated.
If you were really clever, you would coat the bulb with a bunch of quantum dots with a distribution of sizes and match their valence energies to emulate a black body spectrum. But you can’t use silicon because it doesn’t fluoresce, and GaAs nanoparticles aren’t safe to sell in powder form. That leaves you with organic materials but the molecules tend to fall apart after a year or so which is why OLED displays were so slow to make it to market. So … Maybe the organically will come down in price eventually.
@alexkingorg They can, but it’s much harder to make the right colour with them.
@alexkingorg The color temp might be the easy part—the problem is that most have a low CRI (“Color Rendering Index”). http://t.co/5iEVb5FVdb
@alexkingorg You can think of CRI as being like the frequency response for a bulb. Sadly, most CFLs max out in the low 80s. (The sun = 100.)
@alexkingorg It’s not impossible to create a high-CRI (90+) CFL/LED but they’re not common—CRI may be listed on a bulb’s package or website.
@handcoding They aren’t hard to find – I bought a bunch this weekend. The light quality simply sucks compared to cheap incandescent “daylight” bulbs.
@alexkingorg May I ask where you found high-CRI CFL or LED bulbs?
(All the ones I’ve seen at Home Depot and Lowe’s have a CRI in the 80s.)
Because a Laotentzian distribution doesn’t look like a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution Even if you stack a forest of resonances next to one another, fluorescence and continuum emission are easily differentiated.
If you were really clever, you would coat the bulb with a bunch of quantum dots with a distribution of sizes and match their valence energies to emulate a black body spectrum. But you can’t use silicon because it doesn’t fluoresce, and GaAs nanoparticles aren’t safe to sell in powder form. That leaves you with organic materials but the molecules tend to fall apart after a year or so which is why OLED displays were so slow to make it to market. So … Maybe the organically will come down in price eventually.