Home Decoration Tips

Light bulbs! We all need ‘em. We all use ‘em, and we all love ‘em (as long as they work) but how do they work anyway?

The Power

Okay. Light bulbs (known as incandescent) are really quite simple, and simply brilliant. The bulb has two metal contacts at the bottom of the base where they get their power from. These touch the electrical circuit in the fitting attached to your mains electricity, or any number of batteries, if we’re talking flashlights. The electrical charge used to light the bulb travels through it from one contact to the other in a loop. After hitting one contact the current goes up a wire to a filament, which is held on a supporting glass mount in the bulbs’ center, then travels across it, down another wire identical to the first, and on to the other contact.

A Fundamental Filament

This filament is central in importance to the light bulb as well as central in position. It is made out of tungsten, which is a metal with an extremely high melting point, and it certainly needs one. After the light bulb is switched on, the tungsten filament is heated to between an incredible 2,200 and 2,500 degrees Centigrade! As well as its’ own properties, to further stop it burning up; the glass bulb does not contain any oxygen, but instead holds an inert gas called argon or a mixture of argon and nitrogen for all regular bulbs or krypton/xenon instead of the argon for more expensive premium models. (What about halogen bulbs? We’ll get to them later).

Nothing Lasts Forever

So the tungsten filament is under tremendous strain, and won’t last. As the bulb is used for more and more hours the vibration and white-hot temperatures begin to take their toll. Increasingly the atoms from the coil will shake so much they will start to lose contact with each other and begin splitting away from their brethren.

Long Lifers and Energy Misers

Long life light bulbs certainly last a very long time, so it might be argued that halogen is a waste of money. This is absolutely not true. A lot of these ‘long lifers’ are actually quite inefficient.

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