How Light Bulbs Work

Before the invention of the light bulb, illuminating the world after the sun went
down was a messy, arduous, hazardous task. It took a bunch
of candles or torches to fully light up a good-sized room, and oil lamps, while fairly
effective, tended to leave a residue of soot on anything in their general vicinity.
When the science of electricity really got going in the mid 1800s, inventors
everywhere were clamoring to devise a practical, affordable electrical home lighting
device. Englishman Sir Joseph Swan and American Thomas Edison both got it right
around the same time (in 1878 and 1879, respectively), and within 25 years,
millions of people around the world had installed electrical lighting in their homes.
The easy-to-use technology was such an improvement over the old ways that the
world never looked back.
The amazing thing about this historical turn of events is that the light bulb itself
could hardly be simpler. The modern light bulb, which hasn't changed drastically
since Edison's model, is made up of only a handful of parts. In this article, we'll see
how these parts come together to produce bright light for hours on end.
Light Basics
Light is a form of energy that can be released by an atom. It is made up of many
small particle-like packets that have energy and momentum but no mass. These
particles, called light photons, are the most basic units of light. (For more
information, see How Light Works.)

Atoms release light photons when their electrons become excited. If you've
read How Atoms Work, then you know that electrons are the negatively charged
particles that move around an atom's nucleus (which has a net positive charge). An
atom's electrons have different levels of energy, depending on several factors,
including their speed and distance from the nucleus. Electrons of different energy
levels occupy different orbitals. Generally speaking, electrons with greater energy
move in orbitals farther away from the nucleus. When an atom gains or loses
energy, the change is expressed by the movement of electrons. When something
passes energy on to an atom, an electron may be temporarily boosted to a higher
orbital (farther away from the nucleus). The electron only holds this position for a
tiny fraction of a second; almost immediately, it is drawn back toward the nucleus,
to its original orbital. As it returns to its original orbital, the electron releases the
extra energy in the form of a photon, in some cases a light photon.
The wavelength of the emitted light (which determines its color) depends on how
much energy is released, which depends on the particular position of the electron.
Consequently, different sorts of atoms will release different sorts of light photons. In
other words, the color of the light is determined by what kind of atom is excited.
This is the basic mechanism at work in nearly all light sources. The main difference
between these sources is the process of exciting the atoms.
In the next section we'll look at the different parts of a light bulb.

Light Bulb Structure

Light bulbs have a very simple structure. At the base, they have two metal contacts,
which connect to the ends of an electrical circuit. The metal contacts are attached
to two stiff wires, which are attached to a thin metal filament. The filament sits in
the middle of the bulb, held up by a glass mount. The wires and the filament are
housed in a glass bulb, which is filled with an inert gas, such as argon.
When the bulb is hooked up to a power supply, an electric current flows from one
contact to the other, through the wires and the filament. Electric current in a solid
conductor is the mass movement of free electrons (electrons that are not tightly
bound to an atom) from a negatively charged area to a positively charged area.
As the electrons zip along through the filament, they are constantly bumping into
the atoms that make up the filament. The energy of each impact vibrates an atom -in other words, the current heats the atoms up. A thinner conductor heats up more
easily than a thicker conductor because it is more resistant to the movement of
electrons.
Bound electrons in the vibrating atoms may be boosted temporarily to a higher
energy level. When they fall back to their normal levels, the electrons release the
extra energy in the form of photons. Metal atoms release mostly infrared light
photons, which are invisible to the human eye. But if they are heated to a high
enough level -- around 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 degrees C) in the case of a
light bulb -- they will emit a good deal of visible light.
The filament in a light bulb is made of a long, incredibly thin length
of tungsten metal. In a typical 60-watt bulb, the tungsten filament is about 6.5 feet
(2 meters) long but only one-hundredth of an inch thick. The tungsten is arranged in
a double coil in order to fit it all in a small space. That is, the filament is wound up to
make one coil, and then this coil is wound to make a larger coil. In a 60-watt bulb,
the coil is less than an inch long.
Tungsten is used in nearly all incandescent light bulbs because it is an ideal filament
material. In the next section, we'll find out why this is, and we'll examine the role of
the glass bulb and inert gas.
The Filament
As we saw in the last section, a metal must be heated to extreme temperatures
before it will emit a useful amount of visible light. Most metals will
actually melt before reaching such extreme temperatures -- the vibration will break
apart the rigid structural bonds between the atoms so that the material becomes a
liquid. Light bulbs are manufactured with tungsten filaments because tungsten has
an abnormally high melting temperature.
But tungsten will catch on fire at such high temperatures, if the conditions are
right. Combustion is caused by a reaction between two chemicals, which is set off

when one of the chemicals has reached its ignition temperature. On Earth,
combustion is usually a reaction between oxygen in the atmosphere and some
heated material, but other combinations of chemicals will combust as well.
The filament in a light bulb is housed in a sealed, oxygen-free chamber to prevent
combustion. In the first light bulbs, all the air was sucked out of the bulb to create a
near vacuum -- an area with no matter in it. Since there wasn't any gaseous matter
present (or hardly any), the material could not combust.
The problem with this approach was the evaporation of the tungsten atoms. At such
extreme temperatures, the occasional tungsten atom vibrates enough to detach
from the atoms around it and flies into the air. In a vacuum bulb, free tungsten
atoms shoot out in a straight line and collect on the inside of the glass. As more and
more atoms evaporate, the filament starts to disintegrate, and the glass starts to
get darker. This reduces the life of the bulb considerably.
In a modern light bulb, inert gases, typically argon, greatly reduce this loss of
tungsten. When a tungsten atom evaporates, chances are it will collide with an
argon atom and bounce right back toward the filament, where it will rejoin the solid
structure. Since inert gases normally don't react with other elements, there is no
chance of the elements combining in a combustion reaction.
Cheap, effective and easy-to-use, the light bulb has proved a monstrous success. It
is still the most popular method of bringing light indoors and extending the day
after sundown. But by all indications, it will eventually give way to more advanced
technologies, because it isn't very efficient.
Incandescent light bulbs give off most of their energy in the form of heat-carrying
infrared light photons -- only about 10 percent of the light produced is in the visible
spectrum. This wastes a lot of electricity. Cool light sources, such as fluorescent
lamps and LEDs, don't waste a lot of energy generating heat -- they give off mostly
visible light. For this reason, they are slowly edging out the old reliable light bulb.
How Fluorescent Lamps Work
You see fluorescent lighting everywhere these days -- in offices, stores, warehouses,
street corners... You'll even find fluorescent lamps in peoples' homes. But even
though they're all around us, these devices are a total mystery to most people. Just
what is going on inside those white tubes?
In this article, we'll find out how fluorescent lamps emit such a bright glow without
getting scalding hot like an ordinary light bulb. We'll also find out why fluorescent
lamps are more efficient than incandescent lighting, and see how

Let There Be Light

To understand fluorescent lamps, it helps to know a little about light itself. Light is a
form of energy that can be released by an atom. It is made up of many small
particle-like packets that have energy and momentum but no mass. These particles,
called light photons, are the most basic units of light. (For more information,
see How Light Works.)
Atoms release light photons when their electrons become excited. If you've
read How Atoms Work, then you know electrons are the negatively charged particles
that move around an atom's nucleus (which has a net positive charge). An atom's
electrons have different levels of energy, depending on several factors, including
their speed and distance from the nucleus. Electrons of different energy levels
occupy different orbitals. Generally speaking, electrons with greater energy move
in orbital farther away from the nucleus.
When atom gains or losses energy, the change is expressed by the movement of
electrons. When something passes energy on to an atom -- heat, for example -- an
electron may be temporarily boosted to a higher orbital (farther away from the
nucleus). The electron only holds this position for a tiny fraction of a second; almost
immediately, it is drawn back toward the nucleus, to its original orbital. As it returns
to its original orbital, the electron releases the extra energy in the form of a photon,
in some cases a light photon.

The wavelength of the emitted light depends on how much energy is released,
which depends on the particular position of the electron. Consequently, different
sorts of atoms will release different sorts of light photons. In other words,
the color of the light is determined by what kind of atom is excited.
This is the basic mechanism at work in nearly all light sources. The main difference
between these sources is the process of exciting the atoms. In an incandescent
light source, such as an ordinary light bulb or gas lamp, atoms are excited by
heat; in a light stick, atoms are excited by a chemical reaction. Fluorescent lamps
have one of the most elaborate systems for exciting atoms, as we'll see in the next
section.

Down the Tubes

The central element in a fluorescent lamp is a sealed glass tube. The tube
contains a small bit of mercury and an inert gas, typically argon, kept under very
low pressure. The tube also contains a phosphor powder, coated along the inside
of the glass. The tube has two electrodes, one at each end, which are wired to an
electrical circuit. The electrical circuit, which we'll examine later, is hooked up to an
alternating current (AC) supply.
When you turn the lamp on, the current flows through the electrical circuit to the
electrodes. There is a considerable voltage across the electrodes, so electrons will
migrate through the gas from one end of the tube to the other. This energy changes
some of the mercury in the tube from a liquid to a gas. As electrons and charged
atoms move through the tube, some of them will collide with the gaseous mercury
atoms. These collisions excite the atoms, bumping electrons up to higher energy
levels. When the electrons return to their original energy level, they release light
photons.
As we saw in the last section, the wavelength of a photon is determined by the
particular electron arrangement in the atom. The electrons in mercury atoms are
arranged in such a way that they mostly release light photons in

the ultraviolet wavelength range. Our eyes don't register ultraviolet photons, so
this sort of light needs to be converted into visible light to illuminate the lamp.
This is where the tube's phosphor powder coating comes in. Phosphors are
substances that give off light when they are exposed to light. When a photon hits a
phosphor atom, one of the phosphor's electrons jumps to a higher energy level and
the atom heats up. When the electron falls back to its normal level, it releases
energy in the form of another photon. This photon has less energy than the original
photon, because some energy was lost as heat. In a fluorescent lamp, the emitted
light is in the visible spectrum -- the phosphor gives off white light we can see.
Manufacturers can vary the color of the light by using different combinations of
phosphors.
Conventional incandescent light bulbs also emit a good bit of ultraviolet light, but
they do not convert any of it to visible light. Consequently, a lot of the energy used
to power an incandescent lamp is wasted. A fluorescent lamp puts this invisible light
to work, and so is more efficient. Incandescent lamps also lose more energy
through heat emission than do fluorescent lamps. Overall, a typical fluorescent lamp
is four to six times more efficient than an incandescent lamp. People generally use
incandescent lights in the home, however, since they emit a "warmer" light -- a light
with more red and less blue.
As we've seen, the entire fluorescent lamp system depends on an electrical current
flowing through the gas in the glass tube. In the next section, we'll see what a
fluorescent lamp needs to do to establish this current.
Cooking with Gas
In the last section, we saw that mercury atoms in a fluorescent lamps glass tube are
excited by electrons flowing in an electrical current. This electrical current is
something like the current in an ordinary wire, but it passes through gas instead of
through a solid. Gas conductors differ from solid conductors in a number of ways.
In a solid conductor, electrical charge is carried by free electrons jumping from atom
to atom, from a negatively-charged area to a positively-charged area. As we've
seen, electrons always have a negative charge, which means they are always drawn
toward positive charges. In a gas, electrical charge is carried by free
electrons moving independently of atoms. Current is also carried by ions, atoms
that have an electrical charge because they have lost or gained an electron. Like
electrons, ions are drawn to oppositely charged areas.
To send a current through gas in a tube, then, a fluorescent light needs to have two
things:
1. Free electrons and ions
2. A difference in charge between the two ends of the tube (a voltage)

Generally, there are few ions and free electrons in a gas, because all of the atoms
naturally maintain a neutral charge. Consequently, it is difficult to conduct an
electrical current through most gases. When you turn on a fluorescent lamp, the
first thing it needs to do is introduce many new free electrons from both
electrodes.

Start it Up
The classic fluorescent lamp design, which has fallen mostly by the wayside, used a
special starter switch mechanism to light up the tube. You can see how this system
works in the diagram below.
When the lamp first turns on, the path of least resistance is through the bypass
circuit, and across the starter switch. In this circuit, the current passes through
the electrodes on both ends of the tube. These electrodes are simple filaments,
like you would find in an incandescent light bulb. When the current runs through the
bypass circuit, electricity heats up the filaments. This boils off electrons from the
metal surface, sending them into the gas tube, ionizing the gas.
At the same time, the electrical current sets off an interesting sequence of events in
the starter switch. The conventional starter switch is a small discharge bulb,
containing neon or some other gas. The bulb has two electrodes positioned right
next to each other. When electricity is initially passed through the bypass circuit,
an electrical arc (essentially, a flow of charged particles) jumps between these
electrodes to make a connection. This arc lights the bulb in the same way a larger
arc lights a fluorescent bulb.

One of the electrodes is a bimetallic strip that bends when it is heated. The small
amount of heat from the lit bulb bends the bimetallic strip so it makes contact with
the other electrode. With the two electrodes touching each other, the current
doesn't need to jump as an arc anymore. Consequently, there are no charged
particles flowing through the gas, and the light goes out. Without the heat from the
light, the bimetallic strip cools, bending away from the other electrode. This opens
the circuit.

Inside the casing of a conventional fluorescent starter there is a small gas

discharge lamp.
By the time this happens, the filaments have already ionized the gas in the
fluorescent tube, creating an electrically conductive medium. The tube just needs a
voltage kick across the electrodes to establish an electrical arc. This kick is provided
by the lamps ballast, a special sort of transformer wired into the circuit.
When the current flows through the bypass circuit, it establishes a magnetic
field in part of the ballast. This magnetic field is maintained by the flowing current.
When the starter switch is opened, the current is briefly cut off from the ballast. The
magnetic field collapses, which creates a sudden jump in current -- the ballast
releases its stored energy.

Rapid start and starter switch fluorescent bulbs have two pins that slide
against two contact points in an electrical circuit.
Light Right Away
Today, the most popular fluorescent lamp design is the rapid start lamp. This
design works on the same basic principle as the traditional starter lamp, but it
doesn't have a starter switch. Instead, the lamp's ballast constantly channels
current through both electrodes. This current flow is configured so that there is a
charge difference between the two electrodes, establishing a voltage across the
tube.
When the fluorescent light is turned on, both electrode filaments heat up very
quickly, boiling off electrons, which ionize the gas in the tube. Once the gas is
ionized, the voltage difference between the electrodes establishes an electrical arc.
The flowing charged particles (red) excite the mercury atoms (silver), triggering the
illumination process.
An alternative method, used in instant-start fluorescent lamps, is to apply a very
high initial voltage to the electrodes. This high voltage creates a corona discharge.
Essentially, an excess of electrons on the electrode surface forces some electrons
into the gas. These free electrons ionize the gas, and almost instantly the voltage
difference between the electrodes establishes an electrical arc.
No matter how the starting mechanism is configured, the end result is the same: a
flow of electrical current through an ionized gas. This sort of gas discharge has a
peculiar and problematic quality: If the current isn't carefully controlled, it will
continually increase, and possibly explode the light fixture. In the next section, we'll
find out why this is and see how a fluorescent lamp keeps things running smoothly.

The ballast, starter switch and fluorescent bulb are all wired together in a
simple circuit.
This surge in current helps build the initial voltage needed to establish the
electrical arc through the gas. Instead of flowing through the bypass circuit and
jumping across the gap in the starter switch, the electrical current flows through the
tube. The free electrons collide with the atoms, knocking loose other electrons,
which create ions. The result is plasma, a gas composed largely of ions and free
electrons, all moving freely. This creates a path for an electrical current.
The impact of flying electrons keeps the two filaments warm, so they continue to
emit new electrons into the plasma. As long as there is AC current, and the
filaments aren't worn out, current will continue to flow through the tube.
The problem with this sort of lamp is it takes a few seconds for it to light up. These
days, most fluorescent lamps are designed to light up almost instantly. In the next
section, we'll see how these modern designs work.
Ballast Balance
We saw in the last section that gases don't conduct electricity in the same way as
solids. One major difference between solids and gases is their electrical
resistance (the opposition to flowing electricity). In a solid metal conductor such as
a wire, resistance is a constant at any given temperature, controlled by the size of
the conductor and the nature of the material.
In a gas discharge, such as a fluorescent lamp, current causes resistance to
decrease. This is because as more electrons and ions flow through a particular area,
they bump into more atoms, which frees up electrons, creating more charged
particles. In this way, current will climb on its own in a gas discharge, as long as
there is adequate voltage (and household AC current has a lot of voltage). If the
current in a fluorescent light isn't controlled, it can blow out the various electrical
components.
Fluorescent lamps ballast works to control this. The simplest sort of ballast,
generally referred to as magnetic ballast, works something like an inductor. A basic
inductor consists of a coil of wire in a circuit, which may be wound around a piece of
metal. If you've read How Electromagnets Work, you know that when you send

electrical current through a wire, it generates a magnetic field. Positioning the wire
in concentric loops amplifies this field.
This sort of field affects not only objects around the loop, but also the loop itself.
Increasing the current in the loop increases the magnetic field, which applies a
voltage opposite the flow of current in the wire. In short, a coiled length of wire in a
circuit (an inductor) opposes change in the current flowing through it.
The transformer elements in a magnetic ballast use this principle to regulate the
current in a fluorescent lamp.
Ballast can only slow down changes in current -- it can't stop them. But the
alternating current powering a fluorescent light is constantly reversing itself, so
the ballast only has to inhibit increasing current in a particular direction for a short
amount of time. Check out this site for more information on this process.
Magnetic ballasts modulate electrical current at a relatively low cycle rate, which
can cause a noticeable flicker. Magnetic ballasts may also vibrate at a low
frequency. This is the source of the audible humming sound people associate with
fluorescent lamps.
Modern ballast designs use advanced electronics to more precisely regulate the
current flowing through the electrical circuit. Since they use a higher cycle rate, you
don't generally notice a flicker or humming noise coming from electronic ballast.
Different lamps require specialized ballasts designed to maintain the specific
voltage and current levels needed for varying tube designs.
Fluorescent lamps come in all shapes and sizes, but they all work on the same basic
principle: An electric current stimulates mercury atoms, which causes them to
release ultraviolet photons. These photons in turn stimulate a phosphor, which
emits visible light photons. At the most basic level, that's all there is to it!
How Relays Work
A relay is a simple electromechanical switch made up of an electromagnet and a
set of contacts. Relays are found hidden in all sorts of devices. In fact, some of the
first computers ever built used relays to implement Boolean gates.
In this article, we will look at how relays work and a few of their applications
Relay Construction
Relays are amazingly simple devices. There are four parts in every relay:

Electromagnet

Armature that can be attracted by the electromagnet

Spring

Set of electrical contacts

The following figure shows these four parts in action:

In this figure, you can see that a relay consists of two separate and completely
independent circuits. The first is at the bottom and drives the electromagnet. In
this circuit, a switch is controlling power to the electromagnet. When the switch is
on, the electromagnet is on, and it attracts the armature (blue). The armature is
acting as a switch in the second circuit. When the electromagnet is energized, the
armature completes the second circuit and the light is on. When the electromagnet
is not energized, the spring pulls the armature away and the circuit is not complete.
In that case, the light is dark.
When you purchase relays, you generally have control over several variables:

The voltage and current that is needed to activate the armature

The maximum voltage and current that can run through the armature and the
armature contacts

The number of armatures (generally one or two)

The number of contacts for the armature (generally one or two -- the relay
shown here has two, one of which is unused)

Whether the contact (if only one contact is provided) is normally open (NO)
or normally closed (NC)

Relay Applications
In general, the point of a relay is to use a small amount of power in
theelectromagnet -- coming, say, from a small dashboard switch or a low-power
electronic circuit -- to move an armature that is able to switch a much larger amount
of power. For example, you might want the electromagnet to energize using 5 volts
and 50 milliamps (250 mill watts), while the armature can support 120V AC at 2
amps (240 watts).
Relays are quite common in home appliances where there is an electronic control
turning on something like a motor or a light. They are also common in cars, where
the 12V supply voltage means that just about everything needs a large amount of
current. In later model cars, manufacturers have started combining relay panels into
the fuse box to make maintenance easier. For example, the six gray boxes in this
photo of a Ford Windstar fuse box are all relays:
In places where a large amount of power needs to be switched, relays are
often cascaded. In this case, a small relay switches the power needed to drive a
much larger relay, and that second relay switches the power to drive the load.