Can I light a house with a fiber optic?
A house can be light with anything, by candles and gas lamps to fiber optics. However, there is the question, of the efficiency of the system. One must never forget that a light source, like an electric lamp, delivers its maximum output hanging free into mid air, as well as that something added, like a coffer, a louver or an optical system of reflectors or lenses diminishes the performance.
Fact is that in most cases light issuing by a lamp in a spherical fashion is of little use since we need the light pointing towards a specified direction, to perform a task. Even so, is also true that something around or in front of a lamp rests light to the common output of the system. Along with fiber optics, it is no exception. The lamp enclosed in the illuminator would provide a greater quantity of light when taken out and hung from a ceiling than pushing the light by fibers. There is a general misconception amongst the public that when we have a 100 Lm lamp in one place and we run ten fibers to various rooms we would have a 100 Lm light in each room. Such sounds very much like the parable of the fishes and the bread and clashes along with the laws of thermodynamics, as we identify them. If you have a 100 Lm lamp into a box and run ten fibers out, the sum combined output of the fibers will always be significantly less than 100 Lm, currently and in the future.