Light Pollution and a Great Idea

First I would like to start off by saying that Wix got rid of the old blog editor (booo) I use to use and I am very sad about it. This is so weird and I'm not sure quite what they will look like from now on but hopefully I will be able to keep it looking cohesive with all my previous posts. I'm sure it will be fine just will take some getting used to but....like where the heck is everything and what's up with this layout.... anyway... onto important Thesis related things.

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Sea Turtles and Light Pollution

This week I spent a lot of time learning more about the cause I am trying to support with this piece. I read into different studies, watched some Ted talks(one from 2019 and one from 2015) , and many other articles in regards to sea turtles and light pollution. I learned a lot about light pollution itself and the different kinds of light pollution. One of the most interesting points some of the more recent articles focused one was the color of the blue light LEDs vs the old orange colored light from older suffer lights l, and how if we use orange LED lights it will help out a lot because animals don't seem to confuse orange light with the natural light of the moon like they do with the blue light LEDs. Here is a article from National Geographic that goes into light pollution really well. Also a really well done short video about the same thing from them as well, the video even mentions the baby sea turtles specifically as well as other harms light pollution has on humans as well. From this video I was lead to another video that was about how stars are disappearing from our night sky due to light pollution. I learned that 80% of the US population can not see a sky full of stars at night

and I think that is very sad.

Photograph by Alyn Wallace speaker from the Ted Talk I linked for 2019.

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Working on my Project

This week there was some more back and forth trying to figure out what the best thing to do for the glass piece. We determined it will be too heavy to build as a frame so instead I will be looking into building a false wall with the piece of glass attached to it and then the TV will be placed on a stand behind the false wall/glass. I found out that they can not add mounting brackets to the glass so it sounds like it will either need to be built into the wall or, the guy from the glass store said using support blocks? Depending on how this is done will change the size of the glass. Originally I was looking at glass that was 3/16ths thick would weigh about 40 pounds, I can drop the width down to 1/8th which would being the weight down to 30 pounds. At this point everything seems so big transporting it with the van won't be possible so I'll have to rent a uhaul when it comes to moving it. Also I do not have the space to work on the false wall in our apartment so I asked my in laws if they would let me build it I a part of their garage and got the go ahead on that. I was talking to people trying to brainstorm what the best layout/way to build it would be in three foldable equal panels one long wall with short sides etc. AND THEN none of that matters anymore. New Plan.

The New Plan.

So while trying to brainstorm ideas and figure out what the heck to do how I would build the wall etc. my father in law, Shawn, had an excellent idea that is an absolute time save and game changer. At the jewelry store they have these cabinets, and in storage he has a few more.

Now I know that this might not look that impressive but the TV I have fits PERFECTLY inside of these cabinets and they are also super sturdy. Right now they have two pieces of glass in them that slide but we are going to modify one to be able to just slide in a large tempered glass sheet right into it. Shawn said we can get Rick (the glassman mentioned in my previous post) to measure it exactly and we are going to get the same thickness as what the doors are. Some other modifications will need to happen too, I want to add a piece of wood to cover the cabinets to make it look more like a wall. I'll have to take the shelves out, repaint it , cut a hole in the back for wires, and also trim the whole thing down height wise because right now it is 82in tall and can not fit through a doorway, which means I can't get it in here to work on, which I need to because I think I will have the glass installed in it and be painting directly onto the glass that way. After that I will add a decorative wood molding trim around it to make it look like a picture frame. - Having this cabinet is going to save me so much time, money, and stress. It really is going to make such a huge difference in my project.