Bright Idea

Do you feel gloomy when it's cloudy outside? Lack of sunlight, especially in the winter, can affect a person's mood and even cause depression.

The residents of Rattenberg, a tiny town in Austria, have a particularly bad case of the "winter blues." The town sits in the shadow of Stadtberg Mountain, which blocks all sunlight from the village from November to February. Tired of the long, dark winter days, many townspeople are moving away.

But town officials have a plan. They're installing 15 six-foot-wide rotating mirrors called heliostats in a sunny field nearby. Mounted on poles, the heliostats will reflect the sunlight to a tall, mirror-covered tower just outside Rattenberg. The tower will redirect the light to smaller mirrors on buildings in the village. These little mirrors will then bounce light onto the streets, showering Rattenberg with sunshine.

Construction of the heliostats should be completed by winter 2007, just in time to end Rattenberg's blues.

-Katherine Schouten

Copyright Carus Publishing Company Sep 2006
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