http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZrVlV-5TdQ

They look really cool - and the power company will install them for you! The video says they're equivalent to a 40 or 60 watt lamp. The bottles are filled with a water-bleach mixture.

More:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SsGjjMEEDw

Can't quite see it taking off in Britain!

They dont have windows in Brazil?? A few windows would help with the lighting, and have the extra benefit of being able to open and let in fresh air on temperate days.

Just call them "jungle expedient sola-tubes."

I think the 'advantage of them, over a simple hole, is that the bottle and contents will tend to scatter the light around a bit, rather than just giving you a spot on the floor. The tubular shape of the bottle also compensated for the irregular shape of the roof.

Suppose it's one way of dealing with all those empty soda bottles.

Doesn't the water turn green from algae after a time? I don't speak whatever language they are using so I couldn't tell if it was water or some other liquid they were using.

Brazil's language is Portuguese; actually called "Brazilian Portuguese" because it has evolved some substantial differences (I have no idea what thay are) from the "European" Portuguese spoken in Portugual and some African countries. Brazil is the only Latin American country that isn't Spanish-speaking. Written Portuguese has a lot of similarities to Spanish, but the spoken language sounds quite different.

One of Brazil's gifts to the world is the golden-haired Xuxa (pronounced SHOO-sha), a former Playboy model who became a kids' TV hostess in 1983. Here she sports a *very* short skirt in the second anniversary edition of her ratings blockbuster "Xou da Xuxa":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0xIt7S_dgs
Needless to say, she was quite popular with the dads and big brothers.

And here she is looking festive in a red cape, gold hot pants and matching boots, in her Christmas video from around 1988:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-gr38Tp09E

She's still on TV and still gorgeous at age 45:
http://tinyurl.com/7vv4qt

There is nothing new under the sun

http://glassian.org/Prism/Deck/index.html

Fascinating - I'd never heard of deck prisms. Thanks for posting that!