NightHawkInLight
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2022–2025
25:34 · 1.2M views · Jul 9, 2022
NightHawkInLight shows how to make ultra-white radiative paint that cools surfaces below ambient temperature without electricity. He walks through the research papers and the household-materials process.
HN points to it as a practical, well-researched DIY demonstration of passive radiative cooling.
6 comments from Hacker News
This YouTuber[0] does an excellent job recreating chemistry research from papers and improving on the techniques to be accomplished with household materials. He documents his failures and takes an empirical approach to arriving at his successes. I’m not sure of his background, but it’s certainly research that he’s doing. Watching his channel always reminds me that the scientific method does not have “first obtain an expensive degree” as one of its steps. [0] this video
Two YouTube researchers[0][1] (they make science content that is very much not in the traditional form of YouTube) have been working on Infrared Cooling Paint for almost a year now and have been detailing how individuals can make it at home (although a fairly involved/lengthy process today.) There's definitely something here, hopefully someone sells it pre-made, I'd love to try some. [0] this video [1] [LINK]
DIY radiative cooling paint from YouTuber NightHawkInLight - this video It has pretty impressive performance. Tech Ingredients did one or two vids as well - [LINK] Was thinking of whipping up a batch for my rv.
It's a thing in from thousands of years ago [LINK] and today [LINK] for PDRC there are a couple good videos about it from NightHawkInLight this video , [LINK] and Tech Ingredients [LINK] [LINK]
And for a better effect they could use paint that can cool below the ambient temperature by radiating infrared to space (if they aren't already using that, but it's probably more expensive): [LINK] Here is a YouTuber trying to making such paint: this video Another article: [LINK]