Fluorescent Tube light

You see fluorescent lighting everywhere these days -- in offices, stores, warehouses, street
corners... You'll even find fluorescent lamps in peoples' homes. But even though they're all
around us, these devices are a total mystery to most people. Just what is going on inside those
white tubes?

In this article, we'll find out how fluorescent lamps emit such a bright glow without getting
scalding hot like an ordinary light bulb. We'll also find out why fluorescent lamps are more
efficient than incandescent lighting

The central element in a fluorescent lamp is a sealed glass tube. The tube contains a small bit of
mercury and an inert gas, typically argon, kept under very low pressure. The tube also contains
a phosphor powder, coated along the inside of the glass. The tube has two electrodes, one at
each end, which are wired to an electrical circuit. The electrical circuit, which we'll examine
later, is hooked up to an alternating current (AC) supply.

When you turn the lamp on, the current flows through the electrical circuit to the electrodes.
There is a considerable voltage across the electrodes, so electrons will migrate through the gas
from one end of the tube to the other. This energy changes some of the mercury in the tube from
a liquid to a gas. As electrons and charged atoms move through the tube, some of them will
collide with the gaseous mercury atoms. These collisions excite the atoms, bumping electrons up
to higher energy levels. When the electrons return to their original energy level, they release light
photons.

As we saw in the last section, the wavelength of a photon is determined by the particular electron
arrangement in the atom. The electrons in mercury atoms are arranged in such a way that they
mostly release light photons in the ultraviolet wavelength range. Our eyes don't register
ultraviolet photons, so this sort of light needs to be converted into visible light to illuminate the
lamp.

This is where the tube's phosphor powder coating comes in. Phosphors are substances that give
off light when they are exposed to light. When a photon hits a phosphor atom, one of the
phosphor's electrons jumps to a higher energy level and the atom heats up. When the electron
falls back to its normal level, it releases energy in the form of another photon. This photon has
less energy than the original photon, because some energy was lost as heat. In a fluorescent
lamp, the emitted light is in the visible spectrum -- the phosphor gives off white light we can
see. Manufacturers can vary the color of the light by using different combinations of phosphors.
Conventional incandescent light bulbs also emit a good bit of ultraviolet light, but they do not
convert any of it to visible light. Consequently, a lot of the energy used to power an incandescent
lamp is wasted. A fluorescent lamp puts this invisible light to work, and so is more efficient.
Incandescent lamps also lose more energy through heat emission than do fluorescent lamps.
Overall, a typical fluorescent lamp is four to six times more efficient than an incandescent lamp.
People generally use incandescent lights in the home, however, since they emit a "warmer" light
-- a light with more red and less blue.

As we've seen, the entire fluorescent lamp system depends on an electrical current flowing
through the gas in the glass tube. In the next section, we'll see what a fluorescent lamp needs to
do to establish this current.

Cooking with Gas

In the last section, we saw that mercury atoms in a fluorescent lamp's glass tube are excited by
electrons flowing in an electrical current. This electrical current is something like the current in
an ordinary wire, but it passes through gas instead of through a solid. Gas conductors differ
from solid conductors in a number of ways.

In a solid conductor, electrical charge is carried by free electrons jumping from atom to atom,
from a negatively-charged area to a positively-charged area. As we've seen, electrons always
have a negative charge, which means they are always drawn toward positive charges. In a gas,
electrical charge is carried by free electrons moving independently of atoms. Current is also
carried by ions, atoms that have an electrical charge because they have lost or gained an electron.
Like electrons, ions are drawn to oppositely charged areas.

To send a current through gas in a tube, then, a fluorescent light needs to have two things:
 1. Free electrons and ions
2. A difference in charge between the two ends of the tube (a voltage)

Generally, there are few ions and free electrons in a gas, because all of the atoms naturally
maintain a neutral charge. Consequently, it is difficult to conduct an electrical current through
most gases. When you turn on a fluorescent lamp, the first thing it needs to do is introduce
many new free electrons from both electrodes.

There are several different ways of doing this, as we'll see in the next couple of sections.

Start it Up

The classic fluorescent lamp design, which has fallen mostly by the wayside, used a special
starter switch mechanism to light up the tube. You can see how this system works in the diagram
below.

When the lamp first turns on, the path of least resistance is through the bypass circuit, and across
the starter switch. In this circuit, the current passes through the electrodes on both ends of the
tube. These electrodes are simple filaments, like you would find in an incandescent light bulb.
When the current runs through the bypass circuit, electricity heats up the filaments. This boils off
electrons from the metal surface, sending them into the gas tube, ionizing the gas.

At the same time, the electrical current sets off an interesting sequence of events in the starter
switch. The conventional starter switch is a small discharge bulb, containing neon or some other
gas. The bulb has two electrodes positioned right next to each other. When electricity is initially
passed through the bypass circuit, an electrical arc (essentially, a flow of charged particles)
jumps between these electrodes to make a connection. This arc lights the bulb in the same way a
larger arc lights a fluorescent bulb.
One of the electrodes is a bimetallic strip that bends when it is heated. The small amount of heat
from the lit bulb bends the bimetallic strip so it makes contact with the other electrode. With the
two electrodes touching each other, the current doesn't need to jump as an arc anymore.
Consequently, there are no charged particles flowing through the gas, and the light goes out.
Without the heat from the light, the bimetallic strip cools, bending away from the other electrode.
This opens the circuit.

Inside the casing of a conventional fluorescent starter there is a small gas discharge lamp.

By the time this happens, the filaments have already ionized the gas in the fluorescent tube,
creating an electrically conductive medium. The tube just needs a voltage kick across the
electrodes to establish an electrical arc. This kick is provided by the lamp's ballast, a special sort
of transformer wired into the circuit.

When the current flows through the bypass circuit, it establishes a magnetic field in part of the
ballast. This magnetic field is maintained by the flowing current. When the starter switch is
opened, the current is briefly cut off from the ballast. The magnetic field collapses, which creates
a sudden jump in current -- the ballast releases its stored energy.

The ballast, starter switch and fluorescent bulb are all wired together in a simple circuit.

This surge in current helps build the initial voltage needed to establish the electrical arc through
the gas. Instead of flowing through the bypass circuit and jumping across the gap in the starter
switch, the electrical current flows through the tube. The free electrons collide with the atoms,
knocking loose other electrons, which creates ions. The result is a plasma, a gas composed
largely of ions and free electrons, all moving freely. This creates a path for an electrical current.

The impact of flying electrons keeps the two filaments warm, so they continue to emit new
electrons into the plasma. As long as there is AC current, and the filaments aren't worn out,
current will continue to flow through the tube.

The problem with this sort of lamp is it takes a few seconds for it to light up. These days, most
fluorescent lamps are designed to light up almost instantly. In the next section, we'll see how
these modern designs work.

Light Right Away

Today, the most popular fluorescent lamp design is the rapid start lamp. This design works on
the same basic principle as the traditional starter lamp, but it doesn't have a starter switch.
Instead, the lamp's ballast constantly channels current through both electrodes. This current flow
is configured so that there is a charge difference between the two electrodes, establishing a
voltage across the tube.
when the fluorescent light is turned on, both electrode filaments heat up very quickly, boiling off
electrons, which ionize the gas in the tube. Once the gas is ionized, the voltage difference
between the electrodes establishes an electrical arc. The flowing charged particles (red) excite
the mercury atoms (silver), triggering the illumination process.

An alternative method, used in instant-start fluorescent lamps, is to apply a very high initial
voltage to the electrodes. This high voltage creates a corona discharge. Essentially, an excess of
electrons on the electrode surface forces some electrons into the gas. These free electrons ionize
the gas, and almost instantly the voltage difference between the electrodes establishes an
electrical arc.

No matter how the starting mechanism is configured, the end result is the same: a flow of
electrical current through an ionized gas. This sort of gas discharge has a peculiar and
problematic quality: If the current isn't carefully controlled, it will continually increase, and
possibly explode the light fixture. In the next section, we'll find out why this is and see how a
fluorescent lamp keeps things running smoothly.