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Fluorescent lights don't use filaments, they use electrically excited gasses. The reason this technique improves the efficiency of incandescent lights is that
by joshyeager 10y ago
Fluorescent lights don't use filaments, they use electrically excited gasses.
The reason this technique improves the efficiency of incandescent lights is that they produce their light by heating the filament. The hotter the filament, the more light it produces.
So by reflecting the heat back towards the filament, you can achieve a hotter filament with less input energy.
- sitharus 10y agoFluorescent lights do use filaments. At each end of the tube there's a hot cathode - essentially a small incandescent filament designed to emit electrons rather than light. This is the source of the electrons that excite the gasses. While there are some designs that use cold cathodes these are not the common type as they are less efficient. Still won't make this filament treatment help though - sandwiching with layers would probably block the electrons.
- Grishnakh 10y agoSo it sounds like this new bulb will have the same problem people complain about with LEDs and CFLs: slow warm-up times. The filament will take longer to warm up to full operating temperature, since you're relying on thermal reflection in the glass to let the heat build up. I guess they could get around this by having a power control circuit in the bulb, to give it a large inrush current to heat up quickly, and then back off once it's warmed up.