Thursday, August 31, 2006

Compact Fluorescents

Here's an interesting article I grabbed off Instapundit.
http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/108/open_lightbulbs.html
Compact fluorescents are something else again. In a fluorescent bulb, the glass tube is filled with gas and a tiny dot of mercury. Electricity leaps off electrodes on either end of the tube and excites the mercury molecules, which have a special property: When so excited, they emit ultraviolet light. That invisible UV light strikes the bulb's phosphor coating, which itself gets excited and emits visible light, which shines out through the tube. Heat is much less of a factor--CFLs run at about 100 degrees.
Normal lightbulbs convert electricity to heat, which is then converted to light energy through the tungsten filament. Needless to say, the energy conversion rate from electricity to light is pretty low.

I might just start hunting around for some spirals to put at home.

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