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Flourescent light bulbs - What a bright idea.
By Jeff King
Almost without a shadow of a doubt the best use that man has put electricity to is the creation of artificial light from light bulbs. Light bulbs brighten up our evenings and illuminate things in the dark. There are thousands of different types of light bulb available on the market today. LED, fluorescent, halogen and incandescent are probably the most widely acknowledged. The wide range and many varieties ensure that choosing the way to light your project is not a simple task.
If you use purely incandescent bulbs it is quite possible that simply choosing a high wattage will not give you the light to power ratio that you are looking for. You may not get enough light for the amount of money you are prepared to invest in power usage. Before you decide which bulbs you require you should make sure that you have considered fluorescent tubes. These are typically a lower wattage than standard lamps and so give a greater light output for less power consumption. How do they work? A fluorescent tube uses a completely different method to produce light than a standard incandescent bulb does. A fluorescent lamp has two electrical contacts at either end of a sealed glass tube. The tube contains a mixture of gases and has an electrical charge placed across it. This causes a flow of electrons from one end of the glass tube to the other. These electrons bump into the other molecules in the tube and excite them causing them to agitate the phosphor coating of the inside of the tube and causing the phosphor to emit light.
This process produces far less heat than the traditional lighting methods and so less energy is wasted in heat production. Fluorescent tubes are in fact more than four times more efficient than traditional bulbs and this means that a 15Watt fluorescent can produce as much light as a 60W traditional bulb
One of the drawbacks of fluorescent tubes is their disposal once they are exhausted. Because they can contain some potentially environmentally damaging substances they should be disposed of in a facility that caters especially for them, don't just break them up into your garbage.
Another drawback for fluorescent lamps is their initial cost. They are more expensive than standard lamps and this causes you to have to lay out more cash initially. However, the power savings and the extended life of the lamp will ensure that you get back far more money in savings than you have to spend initially.
There are many varieties of fluorescent tube on the market today and the majority of them are catalogued by their T or F number. T denotes that the lamp is tubular and F denotes that the lamp is fluorescent. The first number given usually denotes the power of the lamp and the length and the second number gives the diameter of the lamp if it is tubular.
All in all fluorescent tubes look to be a far better solution than standard incandescent bulbs.
About the Author
Jeff King is a technologist with a background in consumer electrical devices.
Learn more about light bulbs at http://www.lightbulb-world.com
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