Olympic Fountains Get LED Touch
Are you enjoying the 2008 Olympic Games? I sure am. I, like many millions of Americans, am glued to my television set until the wee hours of the night watching live coverage of the men’s and women’s gymnastics finals and the recent 100m track finals. It is mesmerizing. And the backdrop of China makes it all the more intriguing. Its colors. Its elaborately designed buildings and unconventional management of the games themselves make for an interesting story to watch unfold. Getting glimpses of the designs throughout the Olympic park opens up your eyes to the possibilities that color, art and lighting bring to new structures.
Take the fountains located in the Beijing Olympic Park. Osram Opto Semiconductors and Tong Fang Co. worked together to create dragon-shaped water fountains out of Osram’s Golden Dragon LED lights. The water features are more than 600 meters long, formed by thousands of water jets arranged along a curve. The jets launch water as high as 6 meters into the air creating a rolling wave affect meant to imitate the movement of a dragon through the air. The LEDs glow a yellow light upward to 15 meters into the air, spotlighting the movement. The overall features uses over 46,000 LEDs. The lights were used because they have over a 50,000 hour lifespan and take up far less space than other options.
Incredible vision, wouldn’t you say.
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