can someone help me out here?

Question

i have a project about Light bulbs and i need some help on "how Light Bulbs work "and i know it but she said " you can't type it up u need to surf the net" so some help plz plz

Answer 1

Have you tried Wikepedia? They usually have good information.

Answer 2

The simplest light bulb, the one that screws into a lighting fixture, is called the incandescent lamp. If you can find one with a clear glass bulb, you will be able to see the parts inside. Two rather heavy and stiff wires lead up from the base. These are made of an alloy, a mixture of iron and nickel. They are called the leads. Stretched between them near the center of the bulb is a coil of smaller wire made of tungsten. This is the filament, the working part of the lamp.
The bulb is designed to be screwed into a fixture that carries electricity at 120 volts. (That is standard for the wiring of homes in the United States and Canada.) When electricity to the lamp is turned on, the greatest resistance is in the tungsten filament. So the filament gets hot — hot enough that it glows and gives off light. In order to keep the filament from burning up, the air has been pumped out of the bulb and replaced with a mixture of argon and nitrogen.

Our light bulbs are made by automatic machinery which must work very reliably. One tricky part is in getting just the right length of filament. If it is too long it will not get hot enough and will give less light and seem yellow to the eye. If the filament is too short, it will get too hot, too close to the melting point of tungsten, and the bulb will burn out too soon.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

A basic light bulb is simply a wire heated (via electricity) in a vacuum (or the use of an inert gas) - a vacuum is essential to prevent the wire from burning out as it would in air!
As the wire doesn't burn through, it gives off a lasting source of light. The length and quality of the light source depends on the metals used and the effectiveness of the vacuum.

Answer 5

A light bulb works by electrical resistance heating a filament which glows hot.

Answer 6

Yes, go to Wikipedia - it's like an online encyclopaedia and has thousands of topics with links.

Answer 7

Here's the best place http://home.howstuffworks.com/light-bulb.htm

Answer 8

http://home.howstuffworks.com/light-bulb.htm

Answer 9

http://home.howstuffworks.com/light-bulb.htm
http://www.howitworks.net/how-light-bulbs-work.html
I hope this works good luck!

Answer 10

Ask your teacher for help