With a sparkle in his eye, a spring in his step and a throat lozenge in his mouth, Phil Taylor on Tuesday night won the PDC World Darts Championship for the 16th time.

The greatest player ever to hurl a dart, the Power picked up the Sid Waddell trophy after beating the young Dutchman Michael van Gerwen by seven sets to four. And, as the great commentator after which the huge bauble is named would have put it, in winning Taylor proved he has tips of tungsten.

One thing is for sure, across his previous 15 titles, Taylor can have faced few challenges as intense as the one presented here by the young Dutchman. At one point he was 4-2 down, with Van Gerwen, the chucker who appears not to aim, hitting a speedy succession of magnificent trebles. As the 23 year-old from Boxtel in the south of the Netherlands moved apparently inexorably towards becoming the youngest man ever to win the crown, Taylor was sucking on his flights, shifting uncomfortably in his over-sized shirt and mouthing “what can you do?” to the boisterous Alexandra Palace crowd.

It was a fair question. Van Gerwen, whose square-mouthed yells of celebration really ought to carry an 18 certificate to prevent vulnerable youngsters suffering nightmares at the sight of it, looked unassailable. He was out-Tayloring Taylor. As he threw nine 180s, everyone in the arena was asking: what exactly could anyone do against such a force of darts? Not even the Power had an answer to this.

Well, what Taylor could do was to dig deep and produce some of the finest throwing ever seen, even in his imperious reign on the Ally Pally’s giant red stage. At 52, three years after he appeared to have relinquished his grip on the world title, Taylor showed absolutely no intention of falling to the exigencies of time.

Age does not appear to wither the man from the Potteries. Demonstrating precisely what it is that has made him the most decorated player in darts history, he clawed his way back, averaging over 103 for every three darts he threw, chucking in five 180s, finishing with a double 16 and throughout the final providing a masterclass in nerveless application.

And he needed to. Make no mistake, Taylor was up against it here. The Matt Lucas lookalike Van Gerwen is already a superb competitor, a player of flair and flamboyance, whose storm to the final had encompassed darts of a kind rarely before delivered in this competition, even by Taylor. His near double nine-dart finish in the semi-final had seasoned observers fearing for old guard’s prospects here.

“He’s phenomenal that kid, I just couldn’t seem to crack him,” said Taylor afterwards, his voice threatening to crumble with emotion. “He’s one of the best players I’ve ever seen in my career. I am absolutely over the moon, I’m so proud tonight.” As Taylor swung the competition his way, slowly, relentlessly reeling in his opponent, the hugely boisterous, fancy-dressed crowd filling the Alexandra Palace chanted his name to the echo. They were all, they insisted, walking in a Taylor Wonderland. And this after many had booed him to the oche at the start, keen to express their displeasure at his graceless reaction to his semi-final win over Raymond van Barneveld. But then the darts Taylor produced here had that effect on people: there was no other response than to stand and loudly acknowledge his brilliance.

What an evening they were having in the crowd, toasting their good fortune at being present at the self-styled “hottest ticket in sport”. Indeed, it was clear that Alcohol Concern’s Dry January campaign had singularly failed to establish a foothold in Alexandra Palace on Tuesday night. Drink was everywhere in evidence; the place was awash in beer.

But then, this has always been a thirsty competition. A few years back at the final, I was queuing up at the bar behind a fan who, when his turn came, ordered 20 pints of lager. The barman, evidently not amused at the scale of the order, rolled his eyes and sighed ostentatiously.

“Sorry about that,” came back the fan, by way of excuse for his demand. “But there are four of us.”

As it turned out, however, there was little need for any outside assistance to achieve a gleeful dose of seasonal good cheer. Taylor’s exhibition was elevated enough to lift any mood. Never mind that his vocation requires nothing more physical than an occasional walk of a couple of yards to retrieve his arrows from the board, Taylor demonstrated here the kind of mental resolve that is rare in any kind of athletic pursuit. He simply refuses to countenance defeat. And as he does so, you can almost feel the waves of certainty undermining his opponent.

As he began to claw his way back into the match, first equalising the sets, then opening up a lead, Van Gerwen seemed to shrink before him. The Dutchman missed doubles, missed chances, missed doing what earlier in the evening had appeared to be second nature to him. And the more he missed, the more the wry smile played on the old champion’s lips. He knew he had him. He knew he was about to remind us all who really is the boss around here.

Afterwards, as he basked in triumph, a winner’s cheque for £200,000 in his pocket, Taylor made no mention of the threat to retire he had issued ahead of this final.

“They got me through this,” he said of the crowd.

And as he spoke, thrilled by the response to his victory, he did not look like a man keen to depart the scene at any time soon.

For which those of us lucky enough to witness his performance can be profoundly grateful. Quite simply, this was an act of true sporting genius.

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If you live in Scandanavia, you probably take great pride in showing visitors from warmer climes your tungsten-studded winter tyres. Yet keep strangely silent on the amount of swearing you do twice a year when you have to change them. When we’ve got a set of auto-adjusting all-weather tyres we might come and visit you again. Less tyre chat next time, please.

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In the past, 3D printing for manufacturing, or "additive manufacturing," had been primarily used as a rapid prototyping tool for plastic parts. However, the sphere of applications is expanding as use of printable metal alloys, such as tungsten and titanium, gains traction. Creating prototypes is still the dominant application; however, the technology has matured to the point where manufacturers can use it to complement or replace traditional production processes.

Leading manufacturers are now looking at potential 3D printing applications in multiple areas to determine where it could save time or costs. For production processes, it appears that 3D printing can provide the most benefit for manufacturers seeking to move toward smaller production quantities.

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A bit more on economics: an Edison bulb (and all other pre-20th century light sources) is essentially a heat source that produces a little bit of light. A “65 Watt” Edison bulb produces about 700 lumens (a lumen, “lm”, is a unit of visible light power). If you had perfect conversion of electricity into light, you would need only 1.0 Watt (“W”) of electrical power to produce 700 lm. So, an Edison bulb is 1.6% efficient. For such a widely deployed technology, this is amazingly bad. But Edison bulbs are much better than the kerosene lamps they replaced …

A comparable LED bulb* consumes 13 W and produces 730 lm, which is 5.2x better efficiency than an Edison bulb, but still only 8%. The theoretical efficiency of an LED is about 30%, but commercially available LED materials are ~16%, and making a light bulb involves a power supply, phosphors, a protective container, etc., all of which dissipate energy.

Why are LEDs better? Edison bulbs function by making a Tungsten filament very hot, and a hot object glows: radiating energy on a broad spectrum of wavelengths, only a small part of which is visible to the eye. The rest of the radiated energy is mostly heat.

LEDs function by driving electrons across a junction between two semiconductor materials in which electrons move at different energy levels. When the electrons cross the junction, they drop from the higher energy level to the lower one, and the energy each electron loses when it drops takes the form of light to a large extent. The color of the light is mathematically determined by the energy level difference. So all of the light produced by an LED is the same color, and LEDs can be designed to produce light in the visible range. This precise conversion to one color is why LEDs are referred to as “digital light”. There is some waste heat caused by inefficiencies within the LED, however, the net result is a big gain in the percentage of electricity converted to visible light.

This digital precision creates a problem, too. Our eyes prefer full-spectrum analog light: what you get from a light bulb, a fireplace, or the sun. LED bulbs use a mix of phosphors (materials that absorb light and re-emit it at different colors) to convert the single color from the LED into multiple colors that mimic the spectrum, imperfectly. I find today’s LED bulb light pleasing, but my wife thinks the same light looks too orange.

LEDs are also long lived because they do not operate at the high temperatures that degrade the filaments of Edison bulbs. The LED itself has an expected life of about 50,000 hours (six years) of continuous use. Its power supply is less robust, so LED bulbs are usually rated for 25,000 hours. How long they last in practice is TBD, however: I have not used any for 25,000 hours. Edison bulbs are good for about 2,000 hours.

Here is how the dollars work out today. This example is for flood lights of the type used in down lights (“cans”), which is most of what we have in our house (pictured above). If you use a 65 W Edison bulb heavily (6 hours per day, 2,200 hours per year), it consumes $21.50/year of electricity (@ $0.15/kWh). The LED bulb uses 80% less electricity and lasts 11 years, so the electricity savings is $17.20 per year, plus a replacement Edison bulb @ $2, resulting in $19.50 of savings. The LED bulb costs $27 at Home Depot. So you get payback in 1.5 years and expect to keep saving for quite a few years beyond that. If the bulb is less used the payback is longer but the ROI is still good.

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