Christmas Magic, at Rocky Ridge County Park in Springettsbury Township, has added 2,000 strings of LED lights to their display. LED, or light emitting diode, lights are said to use a third-less electricity. The annual Christmas display features 300,000 lights. The electric bill last year came to $8,000.
Light emitting diodes are tiny semi-conductors (or gates) with a specific purpose for electrons that fit into an electrical circuit. Unlike incandescent bulbs, they don't have a filament that generates light by the resistance of electrons pushed amass over a narrow gateway.
In a traditional filament bulb, energy is lost due to heat and a spectrum of light we cannot see. While passing through the LED, the electron is specifically “told� how to release its energy in a specific wavelength without the inefficiencies of loss due to heat and random wavelengths that we cannot see or aren’t the color we want to see.
The color an LED emits is specific to the type of materials used to construct it. Red LED’s were the first commercially available and were very common by the mid 1980’s. More recently, a wide array of colors are available and as the cost of production fell, it became commercially viable for Christmas lighting.
While costing more up front, the new lights at Rocky Ridge will probably last 10 years, cost a third-less to run, be more durable during handling and won't wind up in a landfill as often. LED’s usually don’t fail catastrophically, but rather get dimmer as they age.
Christmas Magic began in 1984, in response to the "energy crunch," when fewer homes were decorating, yet there was still a desire to see Christmas lights locally.
Link here to watch a video I produced about Christmas Magic 2006
http://w2.ydr.com/mmedia/flv/892/
http://ycwebserver.york-county.org/Parks/chmagic2006.html
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