Arc lamp:

Arc lamp is nothing but electric lamp which can produce light by creating an arc in the space
between the two electrodes when electrical energy is supplied. The electrodes are separated by a
gap. In early 1800s, Sir Humphry Davy invented the first arc lamp. In that first lamp, two
electrodes of carbon are used. The arc is produced between the electrodes in air. It is used in
searchlights, movie projectors (high-intensity light)
Principle of Arc Lamp:
In arc lamp, the electrodes are in contact at first which is in air. This causes a low voltage to
attain an arc. Then the electrodes are detached slowly. As a result of this, the electric current gets
heated and the arc is maintained between the electrodes. By the process of heating, the tip of the
carbon electrodes gets evaporated. The high-intensity light is produced by this carbon vapor
which is highly luminous in the arc. The color of the light produced depends on the temperature,
time and electrical characteristics.
Construction of Arc lamp:
In arc lamp, the electrodes are made of carbon. They are suspended in air. Current is passed
through the electrode using a battery or a dynamo. The carbon rods need to be replaced often, as
they tend to burn away. Therefore, solenoids are used in place of carbon electrodes.

Working of Arc lamp:

The arc is produced in the space between the electrodes. Here, space is filled with any inert gas.
The arc is produced by the ionization of this particular gas. The electrodes and the gas together
are covered with a glass tube. When the electrodes are given high voltage power supply, the
atoms in the gas experienced an inconceivable electric force and it results in the splitting of the
atoms into free electrons and ions. Thus the ionizing of gas takes place the broken atoms move in

contrasting directions. The two charges collapse with each other and also with the electrodes. As
a result, energy is emitted in the form of a flash of light. This flash of light is called an arc.The
name of the arc lamp and color of light emitted will directly depend on the atomic structure of
the inert gas that is filled in the glass tube. The typical temperature of arc is over 3000oC or
5400oC. The color of the light emitted by the xenon arc lamp is white which is used widely. From
the neon arc lamp, we get red color and from the mercury arc lamp, bluish color is obtained. The
combination of inert gasses also used. They will give more even light spectrum in a wider range
of wavelength.
Types of Arc Lamp:

Carbon arc lamp

Flame arc lamp
Magnetic arc lamp

Carbon Arc lamp:

Principle of carbon arc Lamp:
In carbon arc lamp, the electrodes are in contact at first which is in air. This causes a low voltage
to attain an arc. Then the electrodes are detached slowly. As a result of this, the electric current
gets heated and the arc is maintained between the electrodes. By the process of heating, the tip of
the carbon electrodes gets evaporated. The high-intensity light is produced by this carbon vapor
which is highly luminous in the arc. The color of the light produced depends on the temperature,
time and electrical characteristics.
Construction of carbon arc lamp:
In a carbon arc lamp, the electrodes are made of carbon. They are suspended in air. Current is
passed through the electrode using a battery or a dynamo. The carbon rods need to be replaced
often, as they tend to burn away. Therefore, solenoids are used in place of carbon electrodes.

Working of carbon arc lamp:

Lamp is a spark or electric arc through the air between two carbon rods. The rods must have a
gap in between of the right size. If the gap is too big than the arc will flicker more or may go out,
if the gap is to narrow than it will produce less light. The first carbon was made of charcoal .The

carbon substance is vaporized in the high temperature of the arc (around 6500 F, 3600 C). The
carbon vapor is highly luminous and this is why we use carbon in the lamp. This light is much
more useful and bright than that of an arc between steel like in the Jacobs Ladder example photo
below. The carbon vapor and normal air ionizes easily which helps make light. When the atoms
of the carbon and air ionize it means they give up and take on electrons. This happens as electric
current passes from one electrode to the other electrode. Lighting ionizes the air that is passes
through.

Flame arc lamp:

Principle of flame arc Lamp:

Incandescent lamp:
Principle of Incandescent Lamp:
Light bulbs work on a very simple principle. When metal is heated, it glows! The only problem
is that it has to be heated up a lot. Electricity comes into a light bulb via a hot wire connected to a
tab on the base of the bulb. Inside the bulb the electricity goes through a wire leading to a piece
of tungsten. The tungsten is very thin and coiled to maximize resistance in the wire. When
electricity meets resistance, it heats up the resistor. The tungsten gets to a temperature of about
4500 Fahrenheit (2482). This causes it to get white hot. It glows, and glows quite brightly.
Tungsten is used because it has a very high melting point. The tungsten is encased in a bulb for
good reason. Not only does it protect people and objects from the hot tungsten, it also keeps
oxygen away from the hot metal, which would make it immediately burn up. The bulb is usually
filled with a low pressure, inert gas such as argon. After the electricity has made its way through
the tungsten filament, it goes down another wire and out of the bulb via the metal portion at the
side of the socket.
Construction of Incandescent lamp:
The filament is attached across two lead wires. One lead wire is connected to the foot contact and
other is terminated on the metallic base of the bulb. Both of the lead wires pass through glass
support mounted at the lower middle of the bulb. Two support wires also attached to glass
support are used to support filament at its middle portion. The foot contact is isolated from
metallic base by insulation materials. The entire system is encapsulated by a colored or
phosphates coated or transparent glass bulb. The glass bulb may be filled with insert gases or it is
kept vacuum depending upon rating of the incandescent lamp. The filament of incandescent
lamps is air-tightly evacuated with a glass bulb of suitable shape and size. This glass bulb is used
to isolate the filament from surrounding air to prevent oxidation of filament and to minimize
convention current surround the filament hence to keep the temperature of the filament high. The
glass bulb is either kept vacuum or filled with inert gases like argon with a small percentage of
nitrogen at low pressure. Inert gases are used to minimize the evaporation of filament during
service of the lamps. But due to convection flow of inert gas inside the bulb, there will be greater
chances of losing the heat of filament during operation.

Working of Incandescent lamp:

When an object is made hot, the atoms inside the object become thermally excited. If the object
is not melting the outer orbit electrons of the atoms jump to higher energy level due to the
supplied energy. The electrons on these higher energy levels are not stable they again fall back to
lower energy levels. During falling from higher to lower energy levels, the electrons release their
extra energy in a form of photons. These photons then emitted from the surface of the object in
the form of electromagnetic radiation. This radiation will have different wavelengths. A portion
of the wavelengths is in the visible range of wavelengths, and a significant portion of
wavelengths are in inferred range. The electromagnetic wave with wavelengths within the range
of inferred is heat energy and the electromagnetic wave with wavelengths within visible range is
light energy. Incandescent means producing visible light by heating an object. An incandescent
lamp works in the same principle. The simplest form of the artificial source of light using
electricity is an incandescent lamp. Here we use electric current to flow through a thin and fine
filament to produce visible light. The current rises the temperature of the filament to such extent
that it becomes luminous.

Neon discharge lamp:

Principle of Neon discharge Lamp:

Sodium vapor lamp:

Principle of sodium vapor Lamp:
The basic principle behind the working of sodium vapor lamp is passing electric current
through sodium gas to make the gas emit light. This is called photoelectric effect. There is a Ushaped arc tube made of glass. For an easy start up, small amounts of neon and argon gases are
also present along with sodium gas inside the glass. Passing current through the gas increases its
temperature and the gas vaporizes. A sodium atom has 11 electrons, and because of the way
they're stacked in orbit, one of the electrons is most likely to accept and emit energy. There is an
electric discharge when passing electricity through sodium vapors at high or low pressure. This
causes the valence electron of the sodium atoms to excite to higher energy levels. The excited
electrons emit light around a wavelength of 590 nanometers. This wavelength corresponds to
yellow light. As they produce only yellow light, they cannot be used for ordinary lighting
purposes though their output is very high. This is because most of the light emitted from a
sodium vapor lamp is concentrated in the yellow part of the visible spectrum.
Construction of sodium vapor Lamp:
Low pressure sodium lamps require a number of parts each working in tandem for the lamp to
produce light. There is an arc tube with neon gas that initially makes the lamp have a red color to
it when it is powered by two electrodes at the ends of the tube. This neon serves to heat up the
sodium metal in the lamp and vaporize the sodium into sodium vapor. Which then begins to emit
its yellow light as it is excited by the electric current.The process of the neon heating up the
sodium metal into sodium vapor means that it takes anywhere from five to ten minutes for the
lamp to fully turn on. Since the sodium vapor will not immediately return to its solid metal form
the light will reignite after a loss of power as long as power is returned relatively quickly to the
lamp.

Working of sodium vapor lamp:

The sodium is in the form of a solid, deposited on the walls of inner tube. when sufficient voltage
is impressed across the electrodes, the discharge start in the inert gas, i.e neon; it operates as a
low pressure neon lamp with pink color. The temperature of lamp increase gradually and the
metallic sodium vaporize and then ionize there by producing the monochromatic yellow light.
This lamp takes 10-15 min to give it full light.
In order to start the lamp, 380-450V of striking voltage required for 40-and 100W lamps. These
voltages can be obtained from a high reactance transformer or an auto transformer. the operating
power factor of the lamp is very poor, so that a capacitor is placed to improve the power factor to
above 0.8.more care should be taken while replacing the inner tube, if it is broken, then sodium
in contact with the moisture; therefore, f ire will result. The lamp must be operated horizontally
or nearly so, to speared out the sodium well along the tube.
The efficiency of sodium vapor lamp is lies between 40 and 50 lumen/W. normally these lamps
are manufactured in 45-60, 85-and 140W ratings. The normal operating temperature of these
lamps is 300 c. the average life of sodium lamps is 3000hr and such bulb are not affected by
voltage variation.

High-pressure mercury vapor lamp: