By Edwin Langley

Resistance Properties of a Light bulb

What is a light bulb, and how does it work anyway?
An Incandescent bulb, more commonly referred to as a light bulb is a device that pushes electricity
through a filament located at the top of the bulb. By doing this, the filament produce two forms of
energy; heat and light energy. In this case heat is the waste product and is no use to the user of the
bulb, they just want the light energy produced inside the filament.
In nearly all bulbs now, the filament is protected from oxidation with the outside by filling the bulb
with different gasses or just by causing a vacuum inside the area around the filament. Usually the gas
inside a bulb will be Argon as it does not react with other atoms as freely. Even though our atmosphere
only contains around 21% Oxygen it would still cause the filament to oxidize and burn at a quicker rate,
this would cause the filament to burn out in under three seconds.

Incandescent light bulbs are made in a variety of different sizes,

power, brightness and efficiency. Despite this filament bulbs still
keep their title as a cheap, portable and quick to organize source
of light available to nearly everybody who has access to
electricity.
New, more efficient types of bulbs are available to consumers,
however most of them come with their bad points such as costing
more as other bulbs or taking more time to turn on. As
technology, practicality and versatility all improve we can expect
to see more people buying them. Incandescent bulbs only turn 5%
of their input into useful energy, the rest being turned into heat
energy.

This is a very close up picture of a

light bulbs filament

How Bright is an Incandescent Light bulb and How Much Energy

Does It Require?
Brightness is usually measured in a unit call Lumens, Lumens refer to the amount of light energy
emitted from the source that is received by the human eye (Visible Light). An average incandescent
light bulb produces around 16 Lumens per watt, in comparison a White LED produces ~24 Lumens per
Watt. Here is a graph to show the difference between different light sources.

The term Watt is used as a measurement of

power and was invented by the Scottish
engineer James Watt (1736-1819). An easy way
to calculate the Watt (or power) value of a
circuit is to multiply the volts (Frequency), by
amps (Current) running through-out the circuit.
The opposite of this (V/A=) will leave you
with a measurement called An Ohm.
An Ohm is a measurement of electrical
resistance. The Ohm was named after the
famous, German physicist - Georg Simon Ohm.

By Edwin Langley

What Does Ohms Law State?

Ohm's law states that the current through a conductor between two points is
directly proportional to the potential difference across the two points.
Introducing the constant of proportionality, the resistance.
A good way to put this forwards is by imagining a wire, If the conductive part
of the wire is thicker electrons will be able to move around and collide with
each other. The exact opposite happens when you have a thin wire, the
resistance is higher as the particles can no longer smack into each other.

Does Ohms Law still stand with A Light Bulb?

The filament lamp does not follow Ohm's Law. The resistance of a filament
lamp increases as the temperature of its filament increases. As a result, the
current flowing through a filament lamp is not directly proportional to the
voltage across it. This is the graph of current against voltage for a filament
lamp.