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Light Bulb Experiment



All,

One more piece to add to the puzzle - I noticed that when I was running
current through the various bulbs, the filaments did a lot of "jumping
around". A 15 watt filament, for example jumped so much that it actually
stretched and unwound the tightly coiled filament while hot, resulting
in the filament (still continuous) now rubbing against (and removing)
the internal frosting of the bulb. This was nice, since it let me see
exactly what had happenned. The bulb behaved very much like one of those
carbon-filament party bulbs that Dave Huffman tried, and behaved exactly
like a previous one I had "zapped" open. 

Note that all of this occurred while running only with the lower current
corona streamers to air, which would seem to indicate that the peak
corona currents also quite high. The magnetic forces on the tiny
filament violently hurl it from one side of the bulb to the other WHILE
its brightly lit. Because of arc-overs, I have not yet been able to
consistently send ground-surge currents through any tungsten lamp other
than the straight 100 Watt Halogen bulb. I'd like to quantify (at least
roughly) the magnitude of the streamer currents as well. The research
continues...

Safe and illuminating coilin' to ya!


-- Bert --