The world is full of wonders, and one of those wonders is color and what people have been able to do with them.
The latest breakthrough in color just happened, and it's all thanks to a group of engineers who decided the white available to people wasn't good enough. The whitest white was created and has so much potential according to the engineers at Purdue University.
The thing these folks are most excited about is the ability to use this paint to fight global warming. It may sound a little nuts to say that people can address global warming with something as simple as a white color, but this color can do a lot. The engineers found that the color can cool down buildings.
Yes, this color could keep a building as cool as an AC, so the need for an AC would disappear. Government buildings, residential homes, and businesses spend so much money running, maintaining, and repairing their AC. All of that cash could go right back into their pocket thanks to the whitest white created by these folks at Purdue University.
Economic stability is hard to reach for most entities, and this includes businesses and governments. Spending so much on an AC hurts, so being able to see some light at the end of the tunnel is helpful.
There's a little more to the story though. The reality is that moving away from AC power will also be helpful to this planet. An AC uses so much energy throughout the year. The main reason people pay so much for electricity is that they're running their AC all day. Creating all that electricity for a home uses up a lot of coal, which releases harmful gases into the atmosphere.
As you know, these gases continue to hurt the planet and make global warming worst. Surprisingly, one answer to fight this phenomenon is a simple color.
The scientists said that painting about 1,000 square feet equals 10 kilowatts of cooling energy. That's a wild thing to hear. Being able to feel that much cooling power because the roof was painted with this white color is great.
The reason this color can do all of this is that the color can reflect sunlight in a way that's never been done before. By reflecting this much sunlight, you end up reflecting infrared heat, which is the reason your home or building starts to get a little too hot.
It's not like commercial paint didn't reflect heat, but they weren't good enough. Most of the paints available today could only reflect up to 90 percent of sunlight, which was okay but never made the interior of the building feel any cooler than outside. The ultra-white color just created reflects a total of 98.1 percent of sunlight, which is virtually all of it.
Getting to this point wasn't easy. The engineers had to consider over 100 materials to find something that'll work. The most promising materials were seashells and calcium carbonate. They were able to create a pretty effective white color with those materials, but engineers discovered that barium sulfate would be the best way to create this powerful white. The material has already been in use for some time, like in x-rays or CT scans.
Hopefully, this color changes things around for everyone. It's certainly going to be doing a lot to save money.