Fluorescent Lamps.ppt

Fluorescent Lamps Question: A fluorescent lamp tube is coated with a white powder on its inside surface. If that powder were not there, would the lamp appear brighter, dimmer, or about the same overall brightness, but with an unpleasantly bright white line near its center? Observations About Fluorescents They often take a few moments to turn on They come in several variations of white They are often whiter than incandescent bulbs They last longer than incandescent bulbs They sometimes hum loudly They flicker before they fail completely Seeing in Color Three groups of light sensing cone cells We perceive different colors when two or more type of cone cells respond at once Problems with Thermal Light Temperature too low, too red Incandescent light bulb, 2500°C The sun, 5800°C Not energy efficient Lots of invisible infrared light Only a small fraction of thermal power is visible Fluorescent Lamps 1 Glass tube, low pressure gas, electrodes Inject free charges via temperature or high voltage Forms a plasma—a gas of charged particles Electric field produces current flow in plasma Collisions cause electronic excitation in gas atoms some ionization of gas atoms Excited atoms emit lightthrough fluorescence Atomic Structure In an atom, the electrons orbit the nucleus Only certain orbits are allowed—the orbitals Each orbital can have at most two electrons in it Orbital’s energy = kinetic + potential Electrons normally reside in the lowest energy orbitals—the ground state Electrons can be excited to higher energy orbitals—excited states Atomic Structure Electrons travel as waves Electron in an orbital doesn’t emit light Electron emits light when changing orbitals Light from Atoms Light travels as a wave (a diffuse structure) is emitted or absorbed as a particle (a photon) Photon energy = Planck constant · frequency An atom’s orbitals have specific energy differences Energy differences establish photon energies An atom emits a specific spectrum of photons Electron/Atom Collisi