[Scott]

Scott asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Hi,

Love your show.  My question is how much light can be put down a fibre optical tube before it melts the glass tube?  Also can light interfere with itself like sound does.  If so where does the energy go?

regards
Scott from Melbourne OZ

What do you think?

[Dr.IC]

What exactly you are looking for.....

[syhprum]

Commercial units are available for transmitting about 1 watt over 500 meters

http://www.fiberopticlink.com/Product_Pages/Power_Over_Fiber/pdf/RLH_PoF_flyerR3-web.pdf

While other articles talk of fibre failures if power density exceeds 2 MW per square centimeter 

[scott]

thanks for the link.  I was wondering if you capture sun light from one location and transfer it to the city via fibre optic cables.  Where it could be used generating electricity and maybe remove some of the salt from sea water at the same time. 

regards
Scott

[lyner]

Are they short of sunlight in "The City"? They just need to clean up their air if they are.

[syhprum]

Fibre optical cables are fine for communications but useless for transmitting power.
A much better scheme would be to use the sunlight to generate high voltage DC power and send it over copper or superconducting cable.

[scott]

that canned that idea.  thanks for the responses.

regards
Scott

[lyner]

I think the reason, in a nutshell, is that you can choose your system impedance with electricity distribution but you can't with light.