Learners Live

US Open Set Up for Dark Sky-Friendly Outdoor Lights by Adithi Ramakrishnan

When the court lights flicker on at the U.S. Open, tennis stars shine under illumination designed to cut light pollution.  The U.S. Tennis Association swapped metal halide bulbs for shielded wedge-shaped LED lights. The complex’s 17 tournament courts and five practice courts were approved as dark sky-friendly last year. Most arenas make the change during scheduled maintenance and renovation, working with sports lighting company Musco. The company lights over 3,000 venues a year including college football stadiums, tennis courts and rail yards. US Open Set Up for Dark Sky-Friendly Outdoor Lights – tEDmag

Pickleball & Tennis Court Illumination by U.S. Architectural Lighting

U. S. Architectural Lighting recently introduced Baseline – Pickleball & Tennis Court Lighting. Designed specifically for the court, Baseline uses a Type IV CL precision optic designed especially to meet IESNA / USA Pickleball / USTA Standard Performance Criteria for court photometrics. The luminaires distribute uniform light across the court surface without creating hot spots. To minimize glare, the light is directed at a low angle onto the court surface avoiding direct glare into the eyes of the players to prevent discomfort or distractions during play. The Baseline is available in five sizes in wattages from 85W to 550W, with up to four fixtures per pole, in parallel assembly arrangements, allowing a wide range of lumen packages. https://usaltg.com/product/bas/

 

Telling Time – 12-hour time is a very ancient system that traces back to the Mesopotamian empires. They had a cultural fixation with the number 12, used a base-12 numerical system, and divided up most things into 12ths whenever possible – including day and night. The 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night system spread throughout Europe and the Middle East and has defied multiple attempts to change it over the centuries. Also, for anyone curious as to why there was such a love of the number 12, it was because that was how they counted on their hand. Look at your hand. Notice how each of your fingers minus your thumb has three easily identifiable parts to it. They used to count by using their thumb to count each part of the finger, much in the same way we count to 10 using our fingers today. So, 12 was the max you could count on one hand.