Tag: fluorescent lamps

Can the light from a fluorescent lamp be collimated into a beam of parallel rays?

While a converging lens or a concave mirror can always direct light from a bright source in a particular direction, the degree of collimation (the extent to which the rays become parallel) depends on how large the light source is. The smaller the light source, the better the collimation. Spotlights and movie projects use extremely bright, very small light sources to create their highly collimated beams. Since fluorescent lamps tend to be rather large and have modest surface brightnesses, I’m afraid that you would be disappointed with the best beam that you could create from that light. The ultimate collimated light source is a laser beam. In effect, the identical photons of light in a laser beam all originate from the same point in space, so that the collimated beam is as close to perfectly collimated as the nature of light waves will allow.

What is the difference between the magnetic and electric ballasts used in fluorescent lights?

Fluorescent lights work by sending an electric current through a vapor of mercury atoms in what is known as an electric discharge. Unfortunately, electric discharges are very unstable—they are hard to start and, once started, tend to draw more and more current until they overheat and damage their containers and power sources. Thus a fluorescent light needs some device to control the flow of current through its discharge. Since normal fluorescent lamps are powered by alternating current—that is, the current passing through the discharge stops briefly and then reverses direction 120 times each second in the United States and 100 times each second in many other countries (60 or 50 full cycles of reversal, over and back, each second respectively)—the current control device only needs to keep the current under control for about 1/120 of a second. After that the current will reverse and everything will start over.

Older style fluorescent lights use a magnetic ballast to control the current. This ballast consists essentially of a coil of wire around a core of iron. As current flows through the wire, it magnetizes the iron. Because energy is required to magnetize the iron, the presence of the iron inside the coil of wire slows down the current when it first appears in the wire by drawing energy out of that current. This effect, typical of devices known to scientists and engineers as “inductors”, prevents the current passing through the ballast and then through the discharge from increasing too rapidly once it starts. The magnetic ballast is able to slow the current rise through the fluorescent lamp long enough for the alternating current to begin reversing directions. In fact, as the current in the power line begins to reverse, the ballast begins to get rid of the energy stored in its magnetized core. This energy is used to keep the discharge going longer than it would on its own. The ballast thus smoothes out the discharge so that it stays under control and emits an almost steady amount of light.

Modern electronic ballasts still control the current through the discharge, but they use electronic components to achieve this control. Just as an electronic dimmer switch can control the current through an incandescent light bulb in order to adjust the bulb’s brightness, such electronic devices can control the current passing through the discharge in a fluorescent lamp to keep that current from growing dangerously large.

How does the pressure inside a mercury vapor lamp affect its spectral distribution, particularly as a source of ultraviolet light?

At low pressure, a mercury vapor lamp emits mostly short wavelength ultraviolet light at a wavelength of 254 nanometers. This light comes from the dominant atomic transition in the mercury atom, between its first excited state and its ground state. However, as the pressure and density of mercury atoms inside the lamp increase, two things happen. First, the high density of mercury atoms in the lamp makes it difficult for the 254-nanometer light to escape from the lamp. Each time a 254-nanometer photon (particle of light) is emitted by one mercury atom, a nearby mercury atom absorbs it. As a result, the 254-nanometer light becomes trapped inside the lamp and diminishes in brightness. With so much energy trapped inside the lamp, the mercury atoms are able to reach more highly excited states than at low density. Second, frequent collisions between the now highly excited mercury atoms allow those mercury atoms to emit wavelengths of light that are normally forbidden in the absence of collisions. The mercury atoms begin to emit light at a wide variety of wavelengths, including substantial amounts of visible light. That’s why a high-pressure mercury lamp is a brilliant source of visible light—most of the ultraviolet light is trapped by the mercury vapor and a substantial fraction of the light emerging from the lamp is visible light.

How do “forbidden transitions” become less forbidden as pressure builds?

For an atom to determine that it cannot make a particular transition (that its electron cannot move from one particular orbital to another), it must first “test the water”. The atom effectively tries to make particular transition but finds that this transition is not possible. However, if the atom experiences a collision during the test period, the atom may “accidentally” undergo the forbidden transition. It is as though the atom was prevented from canceling the experiment.

Why do many fluorescent lamps blink before they come on?

The lamp first heats the filaments in its electrodes red hot so that they begin to emit electrons and then tries to start a discharge across the lamp. If there are not enough electrons leaving the electrodes to sustain a steady discharge, the lamp will blink briefly but will not stay on. The lamp will try again; first heating its filaments and then trying to start the discharge. The lamp may blink several times before the discharge becomes strong enough to keep the electrodes hot and sustain the discharge.

How do phosphors change the light from ultraviolet to visible?

They absorb the light and light energy by transferring electrons from low energy valence levels to high-energy conduction levels. These electrons wander about inside the phosphors briefly, losing energy as heat, and then fall back down to empty valence levels. Since they have lost some of their energy to heat, the light that they emit has less energy than the light they absorbed. Incoming ultraviolet light is converted to outgoing visible light.

Why do mercury lamps without phosphors emit visible light at high pressure? What are the “forbidden” transitions?

At low pressure, a mercury lamp emits mostly 254-nanometer ultraviolet light. That light is created when an electron in the mercury atom goes from its lowest excited orbital to its ground (normal) orbital. The other wavelengths of light emitted by the low-pressure lamp are weak and widely spaced in wavelength. An electron must sent into a very highly excited orbital in order to emit one of these other wavelengths. But at high pressure, mercury atoms have trouble sending their favorite 254 nanometer light out of the lamp. Whenever one of the atoms emits a particle of 254-nanometer light (moving its electron from the first excited orbital to the ground orbital), another nearby atom absorbs that particle of light (moving its electron from the ground orbital to the first excited orbital). As a result the 254-nanometer light cannot escape from the lamp; it becomes trapped in the mercury gas! Instead, the atoms begin to send their energy out of the lamp by concentrating on radiative transitions between highly excited orbitals and that lowest excited orbital. These wavelengths become more common in the light emission from the lamp as its pressure rises. But some radiative transitions that are forbidden at low pressure (that cannot occur because an electron is not able to move from one particular excited orbital to another particular excited orbital) become allowed at high pressure. Collisions break many of the rules that govern atomic behavior, allowing otherwise forbidden events to occur. In the case of the mercury lamp, collisions at high pressure permit the mercury atoms to emit wavelengths of light that they cannot emit a low pressure when collisions are rare.

How does a fluorescent light work?

A fluorescent lamp consists of a gas-filled glass tube with an electrode at each end. This lamp emits light when a current of electrons passes through it from one electrode to the other and excites mercury atoms in the tube’s vapor. The electrons are able to leave the electrodes because those electrodes are heated to high temperatures and an electric field, powered by the electric company, propels them through the tube. However, the light that the mercury atoms emit is actually in the ultraviolet, where it can’t be seen. To convert this ultraviolet light to visible light, the inside surface of the glass tube is coated with a fluorescent powder. When this fluorescent powder is exposed to ultraviolet light, it absorbs the light energy and reemits some of it as visible light, a process called “fluorescence.” The missing light energy is converted to thermal energy, making the tube slightly hot. By carefully selecting the fluorescent powders (called “phosphors”), the manufacturer of the light can tailor the light’s coloration. The most common phosphor mixtures these days are warm white, cool white, deluxe warm white, and deluxe cool white.

The only other significant component of the fluorescent lamp is its ballast. This device is needed to control the current flow through the tube. Gas discharges such as the one that occurs inside the lamp are notoriously unstable—they’re hard to start and, once they do start, tend to become too intense. To regulate the discharge, the ballast controls the amount of current flowing through the tube. In most older lamps, this control is done by an electromagnetic device called an inductor. An inductor opposes current changes and keeps a relatively constant current flowing through the tube (although that current does stop and reverse directions each time the power line current reverses directions — 120 times a second or 60 full cycles, over and back, in the United States). Some modern fluorescent lamps use electronic ballasts—sophisticated electronic controls that regulate current with the help of transistor-like components.

Why does a fluorescent bulb sometimes appear blue, especially right before it burns out?

I’m not aware of any tendency to change colors as it begins to burn out, but many fluorescent bulbs are relatively blue in color. The phosphor coatings used to convert the mercury vapor’s ultraviolet emission into visible light don’t create pure white. Instead, they create a mixture of different colors that is a close approximation to white light. There are a number of different phosphor mixtures, each with its own characteristic spectrum of light: cool white, deluxe cool white, warm white, deluxe warm white, and others. The cool white bulbs are most energy efficient but emit relatively bluish light. This light gives the bulbs a cold, medicinal look. The warm white bulbs are less energy efficient, but more pleasant to the eye.

How does an ultraviolet (“black light”) fluorescent tube work?

Some ultraviolet fluorescent tubes are simply the mercury discharge tubes (as in a normal fluorescent tube) but without any phosphor coating on the inside of the tube and with a quartz glass tube that transmits 254 nanometer light. In such a bulb, the 254-nanometer light emitted by mercury vapor in a discharge is emitted directly from the tube without being converted into visible light. A filter somewhere in the system absorbs the small amount of visible light emitted by a low-pressure mercury discharge. For the longer wavelength black light used in most applications, other gases that emit lots of 300-400 nanometer light are used. Again, these tubes have no phosphor coatings to convert the ultraviolet light into visible light. One other way to make longer wavelength black light is to use a mercury discharge but to coat the inside of the tube with a phosphor that fluoresces ultraviolet light between 300 and 400 nanometer.