An electrical engineer is someone who designs and develops new electrical equipment, solves problems and…. Your email address will not be published. Remember Me. Not a member yet? Register now. Enter something special:. Are you a member? Login now. Basic Electrical. A fluorescent lamp or a fluorescent tube is a low-pressure mercury-vapor gas-discharge lamp that uses fluorescence to produce visible light.
An electric current in the gas excites mercury vapor which produces short-wave ultraviolet light that then causes a phosphor coating on the inside of the bulb to glow. Table of Contents. Inside a Fluorescent Light. Fluorescent Light Circuit. 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. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close.
There are several different types of fluorescent lighting including linear fluorescent tubes , fluorescent bent tubes , fluorescent circline tubes , and CFLs compact fluorescent lamps. We're focusing on linear fluorescent tubes throughout this post because of their popularity. Fluorescent tubes are commonly used in overhead fixtures, like troffers, in all types of commercial buildings.
Fluorescent lighting depends on a chemical reaction inside of a glass tube to create light. This chemical reaction involves gases and mercury vapor interacting, which produces an invisible UV light. That invisible UV light illuminates the phosphor powder coating the inside of the glass tube, emitting white "fluorescent" light. Electricity first enters the light fixture, like a troffer, and through a ballast. The ballast — which regulates voltage, current, etc.
Read more: What is a ballast and how does it work? Then, after the electricity enters through the pins, it flows to the electrodes inside the sealed glass tube, which is kept under low pressure. Electrons begin traveling across the tube, from one cathode to the other.
Inside of the glass tube are inert gasses and mercury which are excited by the electrical current. The mercury vaporizes as electricity flows, and the gasses begin reacting with each other to produce an invisible UV light that we actually cannot see with our naked eye.
But we obviously notice fluorescent light bulbs producing light, so what exactly are we seeing? Every fluorescent tube is coated with phosphor powder. If you stuck your finger in the tube and rubbed the inside, it would look like you just enjoyed a powdered doughnut.
We have a recycling service which makes it easy and quick to get the old burned out lamps out of your storage closet and off your mind. We also sell recycling boxes. The main purpose of a ballast is to take the alternating current coming through the wires in your walls — literally in waves, up and down — and turn it into a steady and direct stream of electricity.
This stabilizes and maintains the chemical reaction that is occurring inside the bulb. In order to choose the right ballast for your bulbs, you need to answer these three questions:. Design Variations. Right : A giant compact fluorescent along with a U-shaped configuration, "twisty" bulb CFLs, Circline, and other shapes. Contact us for public hours. See the video below: History of Consumer Fluorescent Lamps where Rick DeLair shows us the various designs along with years and companies.
Hot Cathode Lamps. Inventors and Developments: The 80 year road to the modern fluorescent lamp. Below: our YouTube video highlighting the inventors and their contributions:.
He was the first to use a phosphor coating but it was 30 years later before others really put the phosphor coating idea back into the spotlight. Paris, France. This lamp had greenish unpleasant phosphors. It was not really a "fluorescent lamp" as we know today because it did not have electrodes. His high frequency ballast was a predecessor to modern high frequency ballasts used in modern fluorescent ballasts.
We have another webpage just on induction lamps here. New York City, New York. The phosphors were excited by x-rays in a glass tube.
The lamp had very short life and unpleasant color. Clarence Dally helped Edison build the lamp, but died after exposure to radiation. Edison developed a healthy fear of x-rays after his death and abandon the project. West Orange, New Jersey. The tube looked very much like today's light except that it was longer and used CO2 and Nitrogen to make a pink and white light.
His lights were reliable and sold to department stores in the New York City area. The lamp was short lived in that it was expensive to replace and the Mercury Vapor lamp was competition.
An electric arc through mercury vapor is the basis for the modern fluorescent lamp. It would be another 20 years before mercury vapor was experimented with in the fluorescent lamp. Hewitt's work with electrodes and ballasts formed a basis from which fluorescent lamps operate. New York, New York. Coolidge developed ductile tungsten wire which revolutionized the incandescent light bulb. The material also happened to be perfect for all arc discharge lamps and vacuum tubes and x-ray tubes.
Tungsten has one of the highest melting points of any metal which made it a robust material for making electrodes in fluorescent lamps later on. Schenectady, New York. Photo: General Electric.
This lamp is actually a simple type of fluorescent lamp. It uses neon and argon gas and has two electrodes in a tube. Original neon lamps did not use a phosphor.
It is considered a cold cathode fluorescent lamp. His lamp used UV rays from mercury vapor. It glowed a greenish color due to his phosphors, but had a short life. The hostile conditions in the arc tube corroded the electrodes and destroyed the lamp. If more attention had been paid to his work and more funds invested, he might have finished developing the lamp.
The ugly green color did not help him persuade investors. Berlin, Germany. Hull had contributed much in the field of vacuum tubes, he was able to build of the work of Moore whose patents were bought by General Electric. Hull was able to develop a stronger UV emission from the tube. Most importantly he developed a way to make electrodes that would not disintegrate.
He set the stage for the final advancements 6 years later. Photo: Edison Tech Center. Roberts develop the first true fluorescent lamp. Their lamp has real white phosphors, is stable, reliable, and their design has not changed much in 78 years.
Photo: The Schenectady Museum. See the timeline below for more details. Found and Willard Roberts w C. Nickel and G. Fonda Schenectady all work on better phosphors for more light output with better white colors. They discover the use of zinc-beryllium silicate and magnesium tungstate. He did not patent the lamp early on and GE though it would be too expensive to manufacture.
Later on the spiral tube design spread and became the lamp we know today. Hammer works under original light creator Richard Thayer.
In addition to this Ed Hammer also developed more efficient straight tube lamps starting with the F Watt Miser. Anderson developed many improvements in the fluorescent lamp: short arc fluorescent lamp, fluorescent lamp without ballast, improved electrodes and fluorescent lamp dimming technology. Anderson was a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and employee of General Electric with 27 patents - related to lamp technology. Read more on Anderson's work. Photo: John Anderson.
Myths about the fluorescent lamp and inventors:. The internet has permitted growth of myths about many technologies due to web authors using unsupported facts from dubious websites.
As you can see from the list above Nikola Tesla and Agapito Flores did not invent the fluorescent lamp. Many poorly researched internet sources will claim they did. Most of these sources are "content farms" which pump out online articles with less than one hours work on the part of the author. This means no proper research was done. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone and therefore is also prone to inaccuracies created by fanatics of Tesla and Flores. Development Timeline:. Early History: the invention was developed one part at time over many years.
Bonn, Germany s - Use of fluorescent coating, high frequencies: Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla separately pursued the idea of fluorescent lamps.
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