Incandescent Light Bulb
The incandescent light bulb, incandescent lamp or incandescent light globe is a source of electric light that works by incandescence (a general term for heat-driven light emissions which includes the simple case of black body radiation). An electric current passes through a thin filament, heating it until it produces light. The enclosing glass bulb prevents the oxygen in air from reaching the hot filament, which otherwise would be destroyed rapidly by oxidation. Incandescent bulbs are also sometimes called electric lamps, a term also applied to the original arc lamps.
Incandescent bulbs are made in a wide range of sizes and voltages, from 1.5 volts to about 300 volts. They require no external regulating equipment and have a low manufacturing cost, and work well on either alternating current or direct current. As a result the incandescent lamp is widely used in household and commercial lighting, for portable lighting, such as table lamps, some car headlamps and electric flashlights, and for decorative and advertising lighting.
Some applications of the incandescent bulb make use of the heat generated, such as incubators, brooding boxes for poultry, heat lights for reptile tanks, infrared heating for industrial heating and drying processes, and the Easy-Bake Oven toy. In cold weather the heat shed by incandescent lamps contributes to building heating, but in hot climates lamp losses increase the energy used by air conditioning systems.
Incandescent light bulbs are gradually being replaced in many applications by (compact) fluorescent lamps, high-intensity discharge lamps, light-emitting diodes (LEDs), and other devices, which give more visible light for the same amount of electrical energy input. Some jurisdictions, such as the European Union are in the process of phasing-out the use of incandescent light bulbs in favor of more energy-efficient lighting.
Incandescent lamps are very sensitive to changes in the supply voltage. These characteristics are of great practical and economic importance.
For a supply voltage V,
Light output is approximately proportional to V 3.4
Power consumption is approximately proportional to V 1.6
Lifetime is approximately proportional to V −16
Color temperature is approximately proportional to V 0.42
This means that a 5% reduction in operating voltage will more than double the life of the bulb, at the expense of reducing its light output by about 20%. This may be a very acceptable trade off for a light bulb that is in a difficult-to-access location (for example, traffic lights or fixtures hung from high ceilings). "Long-life" bulbs take advantage of this tradeoff. Since the value of the electric power they consume is much more than the value of the lamp, general service lamps emphasize efficiency over long operating life. The objective is to minimize the cost of light, not the cost of lamps.
The relationships above are valid for only a few percent change of voltage around rated conditions, but they do indicate that a lamp operated at much lower than rated voltage could last for hundreds of times longer than at rated conditions, albeit with greatly reduced light output. The Centennial Light is a light bulb which is accepted by the Guinness Book of World Records as having been burning almost continuously at a fire station in Livermore, California, since 1901. However, the bulb is powered by only 4 watts. A similar story can be told of a 40-watt bulb in Texas which has been illuminated since September 21, 1908. It once resided in an opera house where notable celebrities stopped to take in its glow, but is now in an area museum.
In flood lamps used for photographic lighting, the tradeoff is made in the other direction. Compared to general-service bulbs, for the same power, these bulbs produce far more light, and (more importantly) light at a higher color temperature, at the expense of greatly reduced life (which may be as short as 2 hours for a type P1 lamp). The upper limit to the temperature at which metal incandescent bulbs can operate is the melting point of the metal. Tungsten is the metal with the highest melting point, 3695 K (6192¡ãF). A 50-hour-life projection bulb, for instance, is designed to operate only 50 ¡ãC (90 ¡ãF) below that melting point. Such a lamp may achieve up to 22 lumens/watt, compared with 17.5 for a 750-hour general service lamp.
Lamps designed for different voltages have different luminous efficacy. For example, a 100-watt, 120-volt lamp will produce about 17.1 lumens per watt. A lamp with the same rated lifetime but designed for 230 V would produce only around 12.8 lumens/watt, and a similar lamp designed for 30 volts (train lighting) would produce as much as 19.8 lumens/watt.This comes about because the lower voltage lamps have a correspondingly thicker filament than their thinner higher-voltage counterpart. Because they are thicker and thus made up of more material, they are able to be run hotter for the same lifetime before the filament evaporates.
Lamps also vary in the number of support wires used for the tungsten filament. Each additional support wire makes the filament mechanically stronger, but removes heat from the filament, creating another tradeoff between efficiency and long life. Many modern general-service 120-volt lamps use no additional support wires, but lamps designed for "rough service" often have several support wires and lamps designed for "vibration service" may have as many as five. Lamps designed for low voltages (for example, 12 volts) generally have filaments made of much heavier wire and do not require any additional support wires.
Very low voltages are inefficient since the lead wires would conduct too much heat away from the filament, so the practical lower limit for incandescent lamps is 1.5 volts. Very long filaments for high voltages are fragile, and lamp bases become more difficult to insulate, so lamps for illumination are not made with rated voltages over 300 V.Some infrared heating elements are made for higher voltages, but these use tubular bulbs with widely separated terminals.
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