Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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Night lights that detect light levels are probably flickering so fast that it just appears to be on (lemmy.world)

submitted 5 months ago by rockSlayer@lemmy.world to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Ok so I got this idea not while showering, but because I'm very high. The story does come from my bathroom though! I have a night light in my bathroom, and I was looking at the night light as I turned off the bathroom light. I'm a big nerd so I remembered that the things that detect light levels are actually diodes wired in reverse. I thought it would be funny to make it flicker by reflecting the light back on the diode, but it didn't work. That's when I had this realization

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[–] SzethFriendOfNimi@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Thanks for clarifying. You’re right. It’s the duty cycle of the driver of the LED right?

And as for the motor analogy it is optimal efficiency which I thought did apply to led lifetime vs brightness output but I’m always open to be corrected.

Thanks for taking the time to break it all down for me.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Heat does affect diode lifetime. So brightness/duty cycle certainly does affect how long it'll last, because more energy going through means higher temperatures.

But with any light/fixture that has sane heat dissipation, it's not worth worrying about. LEDs will last decades in most scenarios.