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Lighting Lab at UC Davis

The lighting lab in SAS 120 Global Poverty: Critical Thinking and Taking Action allowed myself, and my fellow classmates, to apply concepts and ideas we had talked about in class to a real world scenario. It further allowed us to step into the shoes of a development worker, analyzing the possible pitfalls or benefits of a given light and considering how to successfully market the product in a given area.

From an academic and humanitarian standpoint, working with solar powered lighting is exciting. Today, more people die from respiratory diseases than any other disease and a way to decrease this number is to eliminate the need to burn biomass for cooking or lighting. The D-Lab has projects that deal with improved cooking stoves, but the Lighting Lab dealt only with personal lighting – kerosene is used widely in places like Africa and the goal is to replace that kerosene with sustainable products that do not threaten human health.

After quantitatively measuring both the Task and Ambient Lux (or light intensity per unit area) and qualitatively considering how each light could be used, the class applied the theoretical ideas we learned in class with the data we had just collected and Professor Kornbluth’s real world experience. With our data and ideas, my classmates and I were able to paint a picture of the steps an organization like the D-Lab, PIET or other affiliates of the Blum center may take when considering how best to create specific products for a specific areas.

The Lighting Lab represented the kind of work we did in SAS 120: we took a macro perspective to understand the general situation and then looked at specific needs or roadblocks at a micro level. Both this lab and the class took macro economic concepts that often seem, in my opinion, completely unconnected to reality and then talked about how the real world either proves or disproves those economic ideas. SAS 120 supplied its students with a basic knowledge of poverty – including the successes and failures of various developmental methods – and an understanding of how best to approach a development project.    

Micah Elias, undergraduate, International Agicultural Development

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