Electric Filament Lamps

The electric bulb is an appliance in which electric energy is used to produce light. Beside the light produced in an electric bulb, some amount of energy gets converted to heat due to heating of current. These had a filament (heating element) carbonized bamboo fiber scaled into an evacuated glass tube. When suitable current was passed through the filament, it was heated to incandescence and there was emission of yellowish light. The filament was fixed with an inert gas usually argon or nitrogen. More coils in a filament means more wire can be put into the bulb, so more light is produced. Tungsten filaments were first used in 1910, These filament could be heated to a higher temperature so could produce more light for a given amount of energy. The Tungsten metal is used to make the filament because it has high specific resistance and its melting point is very high. About 5 million electrons pass through the filament in one second.

Transformation Of Electrical Energy Into Other Forms

In the current flow there is expenditure of energy. The loss in potential may appear in any other of its forms. The transformation of electrical to heat energy, which takes place when current flows in a conductor, gives rise to heating/thermal effect of current. The electrical energy can also be changed to other forms of energy besides heat such as light, mechanical etc. In an incandescent lamp (bulb), the main change of electrical energy is into light energy but some dissipation occurs in the form of heat energy.

What Is Efficiency?
Efficiency of system is defined as the work ,done by the system. It is the ratio of useful output to the total input. Efficiency has no units. Only in a perfect or ideal system efficiency is equal to 1 but in actual practice, it is always less than 1 because there are always some frictional losses due to which output is less than input. In case of bulbs also, some part of total electrical energy supplied is wasted as heat energy. In the beginning I did the experiment by lighting bulbs in water and then noted the rise in temperature. But I was able to improve and accurate my readings by covering the whole apparatus with black paper. By doing so the radiation losses were avoided. I knew the input energy which was calculated using the formula, I then calculated the output work. In this way I got the efficiency of the bulbs.

Scientific Principle Involved

Bulbs convert electrical energy into light energy. But some of this electrical energy is wasted as heat energy. Hence the bulbs are not 100% efficient.The more the heat energy is produced ,the less efficient the bulb is. In the experiment