World Expo Night View: An LED Spectacle
Sitting on a ferry shuttling between the two banks of the Huangpu River, or moving along the avenues of the World Expo park, idioms like "dazzling," "brilliant," and "multicolored" instantly come to mind. Much of the light in the park comes from so-called "LED" components, whose full name is "light-emitting diode"—a solid-state semiconductor device that converts electrical energy into visible light. It is the millions of LEDs that have lit up the Shanghai World Expo Park.
The Oil Pavilion is nicknamed the "Oil Cube," and its exterior wall can display different colors at night: swimming dolphins, the blue sea, the giant "EXPO2010" lettering, brown sandy seas, and black oil—all making visitors feel as if they were right there.
Next to the "Oil Cube" is the Coca-Cola Pavilion, which visitors like to call the "Coke Bottle." A giant Coke bottle up to 15 meters tall is embedded in the middle of the venue. According to Bi Huaxin, Marketing Activity Director of Coca-Cola China for the World Expo, this is the largest LED bottle-shaped display in the company's global system. Its interior is entirely built with steel frames, and the entire "bottle" weighs more than 10 tons, using over 3,000 LED light strips manufactured in Germany. Particularly unique is that, due to the material properties of LEDs, there has never been a bottle-shaped screen before—truly the world's first. At night, the constantly flashing national flags and World Expo logos on the "bottle" are especially striking.
The Shanghai Corporate Joint Pavilion next to the Coke Bottle is known as the "Magic Cube." This unremarkable-looking rectangular building during the day uses more than 20,000 LED light strips, with a total length of about 110,000 meters, divided into 129 independently controlled panels that can form three-dimensional rectangles. The "threads" connecting these light tubes are made of "polycarbonate transparent plastic tubes," whose rather tongue-tying raw material comes from waste optical discs. According to reports, Shanghai produces up to 30 million waste optical discs every year, with only 25% being recycled. If they were developed into plastic tubes, it would not only save resources but also be very environmentally friendly.
The Oil Pavilion is nicknamed the "Oil Cube," and its exterior wall can display different colors at night: swimming dolphins, the blue sea, the giant "EXPO2010" lettering, brown sandy seas, and black oil—all making visitors feel as if they were right there.
Next to the "Oil Cube" is the Coca-Cola Pavilion, which visitors like to call the "Coke Bottle." A giant Coke bottle up to 15 meters tall is embedded in the middle of the venue. According to Bi Huaxin, Marketing Activity Director of Coca-Cola China for the World Expo, this is the largest LED bottle-shaped display in the company's global system. Its interior is entirely built with steel frames, and the entire "bottle" weighs more than 10 tons, using over 3,000 LED light strips manufactured in Germany. Particularly unique is that, due to the material properties of LEDs, there has never been a bottle-shaped screen before—truly the world's first. At night, the constantly flashing national flags and World Expo logos on the "bottle" are especially striking.
The Shanghai Corporate Joint Pavilion next to the Coke Bottle is known as the "Magic Cube." This unremarkable-looking rectangular building during the day uses more than 20,000 LED light strips, with a total length of about 110,000 meters, divided into 129 independently controlled panels that can form three-dimensional rectangles. The "threads" connecting these light tubes are made of "polycarbonate transparent plastic tubes," whose rather tongue-tying raw material comes from waste optical discs. According to reports, Shanghai produces up to 30 million waste optical discs every year, with only 25% being recycled. If they were developed into plastic tubes, it would not only save resources but also be very environmentally friendly.