Oct 7, 2014 06:47 PM
The 2014 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three Japanese, two of them at the U. of Nagoya, the third currently at U. California at Santa Barbara. (He apparently was working in industry in Japan at the time he did the work that won the prize.)
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/p...press.html
The award was for inventing diodes that emit blue light. LEDs that emitted red and green light had already existed for several decades, and adding a blue emitter made it possible to create white-light LED lightbulbs.
I realize that the Nobel committee was probably thinking about 'saving the planet', but this seems like more of an engineering development than an advance in physics to me. Aren't physics Nobels supposed to be awarded for developments that change how we conceive of the universe? I don't know, maybe there's some deep physical reason why these blue emitters emit blue.
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/p...press.html
The award was for inventing diodes that emit blue light. LEDs that emitted red and green light had already existed for several decades, and adding a blue emitter made it possible to create white-light LED lightbulbs.
I realize that the Nobel committee was probably thinking about 'saving the planet', but this seems like more of an engineering development than an advance in physics to me. Aren't physics Nobels supposed to be awarded for developments that change how we conceive of the universe? I don't know, maybe there's some deep physical reason why these blue emitters emit blue.
