What are Fluorescent Lights and How Do They Work?
Many factories, stores, theaters and other buildings are lighted by electrical lamps shaped as narrow tubes. The light from these tubes is soft and has almost no glare. It may be white or another color. You have heard these lamps called fluorescent lights.
The most usual electric light is a sealed bulb, or sort of bottle, filled with special gas and with a loop of fine tungsten wire. The wire is heated white hot, so that it glows, when an electric current is sent along it. We call this effect - light from heated wire - incandescent light.
Fluorescent light is quite different. There are certain metallic compounds, called phosphors, which will glow, or give out brilliant light, when exposed to ultraviolet rays. The fluorescent lamp is simply an electric arc lamp which produces the right kind of ultraviolet rays; and the tube is coated on the inside with phosphors. The ultraviolet rays strike the phosphors and they give out light.
Different phosphors give out light in different colors, so we have blue, green, white, pink, red and yellow lights. By mixing, or combining, the phosphors, it is possible to have variations of these basic colors, and even to have light that is very near the “color” of natural daylight.
The fluorescent lamp uses much less electric current, for the same degree of light, than the incandescent bulb. At the present time fluorescent lamps can not be used in the same sockets as our regular bulbs but must be used with special devices which limit the flow of current and control the operation of the lamps.
