Does a 60 watt bulb produce different wavelengths than a 100 or a 300 watt bulb?

Similar questions: 60 watt bulb produce wavelengths 100 300.

Incandescents produce similar spectra Regardless of wattage, incandescent bulbs produce a color output that peaks somewhere in the 2800 K range. This color temperature is what we associate with the descriptor "soft white" light -- it's a little on the red/yellow side of the spectrum. All incandescent bulbs without specially treated glass will produce light in this spectra -- bulbs marketed as "bright white" will produce light that is more blue, say around 3000-3300 K, but again, regardless of wattage, this will be the same.

Your intuition that "they just produce more or less of the same wavelengths" is correct. A spectral chart for an incandescent looks something like this: This chart shows why if you took a standard incandescent bulb and put it on a dimmer, and turned it up ever so slightly, the filament would glow red. It's red that's mostly produced by the bulb and there is not enough juice yet for the other colors to show up enough to matter.As you ramp up the power, the bulb glows more brightly but emits the same wavelengths, but you ought to still observe the dominant wavelengths in the red end of the spectrum.

If you could somehow bypass the bulb's rated wattage and just run as much power through the filament as you wanted, you would burn the bulb out and see that familiar flash of blue light when it pops -- you won't be able to get a standard incandescent bulb to glow white-hot where it's emitting all wavelengths equally. These properties of light bulbs are dependent mostly upon the filament material, which is tungsten in vast majority of light bulbs. Sources: Way too much light bulb research; picture from users.mis.net/~pthrush/lighting/glow.html .

The wavelight is the same. The filament is longer in a higher wattage bulb and the resistance is lower, so more current flows through the filament, creating more heat and light, but the heat is spread out over the longer filament which prevents the filament from over heating, so the filament in a bigger bulb isn't any hotter than in smaller wattage bulb and hence the spectrum of wavelengths is the same for different sizes of bulbs. The wavelength of light given off is determined by how hot something is, red hot - orange hot - white hot- etc..

The different rating of watt is the energy the bulb will consume. It's not directly related to wavelengths. Of course this is not an easy question to answer because there are many variables.

One of the biggest influences would be material used in the bulb. Basically, the bulb give off a wide range of wavelengths (or frequencies). Some of these wavelengths are not visible to humans.

Here's a piece from wikipedia (link) The watt is a unit of power. We are accustomed to thinking of light bulbs in terms of power in watts. But power is not a measure of the amount of light output.It tells you how quickly the bulb will increase your electric bill, not how effective it will be in lighting your home.

Because incandescent bulbs sold for "general service" all have fairly similar characteristics, power is a guide to light output, but only a rough one.

Hmmm. It depends on the type of lightbulb. There are two basic kinds.

One kind creates light by making something very hot. In incandescent bulbs, that hot thing is the filament, heated by electricity running through it, fighting the resistance (so-called "ohmic" heating. ) Hot things create something called "black body" radiation.In this context, "black body" refers to anything that isn’t transparent.

Black body radiation has a characteristic spectrum that depends on how hot the black body is. If the black body is only, say, 98.6 degrees F, then the black body produces basically infrared radiation only (which you can see with special equipment.) But if the black body gets hotter so it glows red, then it is actually producing visible light. As it gets hotter, the color it creates becomes yellower, then white (hence the term, "white-hot.

") But even hotter things glow in the blue or even ultraviolet range, or even higher, in the x-ray and gamma ray range.So that kind of lightbulb produces different wavelengths (actually they produce a range of wavelengths. See here for graphs) depending on the temperature of the filament. And the temperature of the filament depends (roughly speaking) on the size of the filament and the amount of power is consumed.

A 40 watt bulb might put out no visible light at all if the bulb had a mile-long filament made of thick copper wire. The wire would become barely warm. But a 40-watt bulb might put out screaming UV light if the filament were teeny-weeny and got really hot.

But assuming you mean regular standard-sized incandescent bulbs with typical-sized filaments, then yes, the wattage corresponds roughly to the filament temperature. So a 60 watt bulb does put out different frequencies than a 100 watt, or more precisely speaking, the 60 watt bulb puts out a different distribution of frequencies than the 100 watt. The 100 watt puts out more blue and less red, so it looks whiter.(But change the size of the light bulb, and all bets are off.) The second type of light bulb uses another type of radiation, and that is called Planck radiation.

It is created by electrons jumping between orbitals (as if planets jumped suddenly between orbits. ) When an electron jumps from a high energy orbital to a lower for whatever reason (usually it was kicked up there by some energy source, like a current flow), it releases light (or radio waves or x-rays, etc.) The frequency of that light depends on the size of the jump in energy levels. A big jump means high frequency radiation like x-rays or ultraviolet, and a small jump means lower frequency radiation like infrared light or radio waves.

Atoms all have lots of different orbitals at various energy levels, so when they are excited, they put out several frequencies of light. But those frequencies never change. A particular type of atom, say a hydrogen atom, will always put out exactly the same frequencies of light, no matter what.

Indeed, this fact allows you to identify atoms or molecules simply by the light they are producing.In effect, that is how astronomers can figure out what distant stars and gas clouds are made of. See here for more info. Every other type of light source (LED’s, fluorescent light bulbs, bioluminescence, etc.) all work in this basic way.

So for for fluorescent and LED light bulbs, the frequency distribution of the light produced doesn’t depend on the wattage. It depends on the particular materials used in making the bulb. Look here, at the middle of the page, for a few spectra (i.e.

, frequency distribution) of various types of fluorescent light bulbs. Notice they don’t say what wattage the bulbs are (because it doesn’t matter.) (Whew! ) .

1 lisleman, regarding your answer: That's a good point about what a watt is -- we tend to think in terms of dollars and cents which is why we purchase bulbs in watts instead of lumens and pay our bills based on kilowatt-hours instead of joules. You gotta stick with what the people know, right? Who knows what a lumen is?

Luckily there's a correlation between lumens and watts so all bulbs that consume a given wattage produce about the same amount of light. Doesn't really help us gauge CFLs, though -- instead of judging them in lumens we judge them by their incandescent wattage equivalency, but that also has the benefit of showing us how much power we save by upgrading.

" "Can I put a 13 watt compact fluor. Bulb (equivalent to 60 watt reg. Bulb in light output) into a "40 watt max" fixture?

" "I have a ceiling light fixture that says 60 watt light bulb max. Can I use a 100 watt bulb? What are the dangers?

Similar Questions: 60 watt bulb produce wavelengths 100 300 Recent Questions About: 60 watt bulb produce wavelengths 100 300.

Incandescents produce similar spectra Regardless of wattage, incandescent bulbs produce a color output that peaks somewhere in the 2800 K range. This color temperature is what we associate with the descriptor "soft white" light -- it's a little on the red/yellow side of the spectrum. All incandescent bulbs without specially treated glass will produce light in this spectra -- bulbs marketed as "bright white" will produce light that is more blue, say around 3000-3300 K, but again, regardless of wattage, this will be the same.

Your intuition that "they just produce more or less of the same wavelengths" is correct. A spectral chart for an incandescent looks something like this: This chart shows why if you took a standard incandescent bulb and put it on a dimmer, and turned it up ever so slightly, the filament would glow red. It's red that's mostly produced by the bulb and there is not enough juice yet for the other colors to show up enough to matter.

As you ramp up the power, the bulb glows more brightly but emits the same wavelengths, but you ought to still observe the dominant wavelengths in the red end of the spectrum. If you could somehow bypass the bulb's rated wattage and just run as much power through the filament as you wanted, you would burn the bulb out and see that familiar flash of blue light when it pops -- you won't be able to get a standard incandescent bulb to glow white-hot where it's emitting all wavelengths equally. These properties of light bulbs are dependent mostly upon the filament material, which is tungsten in vast majority of light bulbs.

Sources: Way too much light bulb research; picture from users.mis.net/~pthrush/lighting/glow.html .

The wavelight is the same. The filament is longer in a higher wattage bulb and the resistance is lower, so more current flows through the filament, creating more heat and light, but the heat is spread out over the longer filament which prevents the filament from over heating, so the filament in a bigger bulb isn't any hotter than in smaller wattage bulb and hence the spectrum of wavelengths is the same for different sizes of bulbs. The wavelength of light given off is determined by how hot something is, red hot - orange hot - white hot- etc.

The different rating of watt is the energy the bulb will consume. It's not directly related to wavelengths. Of course this is not an easy question to answer because there are many variables.

One of the biggest influences would be material used in the bulb. Basically, the bulb give off a wide range of wavelengths (or frequencies). Some of these wavelengths are not visible to humans.

Here's a piece from wikipedia (link) The watt is a unit of power. We are accustomed to thinking of light bulbs in terms of power in watts. But power is not a measure of the amount of light output.

It tells you how quickly the bulb will increase your electric bill, not how effective it will be in lighting your home. Because incandescent bulbs sold for "general service" all have fairly similar characteristics, power is a guide to light output, but only a rough one.

Hmmm. It depends on the type of lightbulb. There are two basic kinds.

One kind creates light by making something very hot. In incandescent bulbs, that hot thing is the filament, heated by electricity running through it, fighting the resistance (so-called "ohmic" heating. ) Hot things create something called "black body" radiation.

In this context, "black body" refers to anything that isn’t transparent. Black body radiation has a characteristic spectrum that depends on how hot the black body is. If the black body is only, say, 98.6 degrees F, then the black body produces basically infrared radiation only (which you can see with special equipment.

) But if the black body gets hotter so it glows red, then it is actually producing visible light. As it gets hotter, the color it creates becomes yellower, then white (hence the term, "white-hot. ") But even hotter things glow in the blue or even ultraviolet range, or even higher, in the x-ray and gamma ray range.

So that kind of lightbulb produces different wavelengths (actually they produce a range of wavelengths. See here for graphs) depending on the temperature of the filament. And the temperature of the filament depends (roughly speaking) on the size of the filament and the amount of power is consumed.

A 40 watt bulb might put out no visible light at all if the bulb had a mile-long filament made of thick copper wire. The wire would become barely warm. But a 40-watt bulb might put out screaming UV light if the filament were teeny-weeny and got really hot.

But assuming you mean regular standard-sized incandescent bulbs with typical-sized filaments, then yes, the wattage corresponds roughly to the filament temperature. So a 60 watt bulb does put out different frequencies than a 100 watt, or more precisely speaking, the 60 watt bulb puts out a different distribution of frequencies than the 100 watt. The 100 watt puts out more blue and less red, so it looks whiter.

(But change the size of the light bulb, and all bets are off. ) The second type of light bulb uses another type of radiation, and that is called Planck radiation. It is created by electrons jumping between orbitals (as if planets jumped suddenly between orbits.

) When an electron jumps from a high energy orbital to a lower for whatever reason (usually it was kicked up there by some energy source, like a current flow), it releases light (or radio waves or x-rays, etc.) The frequency of that light depends on the size of the jump in energy levels. A big jump means high frequency radiation like x-rays or ultraviolet, and a small jump means lower frequency radiation like infrared light or radio waves. Atoms all have lots of different orbitals at various energy levels, so when they are excited, they put out several frequencies of light.

But those frequencies never change. A particular type of atom, say a hydrogen atom, will always put out exactly the same frequencies of light, no matter what. Indeed, this fact allows you to identify atoms or molecules simply by the light they are producing.

In effect, that is how astronomers can figure out what distant stars and gas clouds are made of. See here for more info. Every other type of light source (LED’s, fluorescent light bulbs, bioluminescence, etc.) all work in this basic way.

So for for fluorescent and LED light bulbs, the frequency distribution of the light produced doesn’t depend on the wattage. It depends on the particular materials used in making the bulb. Look here, at the middle of the page, for a few spectra (i.e.

, frequency distribution) of various types of fluorescent light bulbs. Notice they don’t say what wattage the bulbs are (because it doesn’t matter. ) (Whew!

) .

Lisleman, regarding your answer: That's a good point about what a watt is -- we tend to think in terms of dollars and cents which is why we purchase bulbs in watts instead of lumens and pay our bills based on kilowatt-hours instead of joules. You gotta stick with what the people know, right? Who knows what a lumen is?

Luckily there's a correlation between lumens and watts so all bulbs that consume a given wattage produce about the same amount of light. Doesn't really help us gauge CFLs, though -- instead of judging them in lumens we judge them by their incandescent wattage equivalency, but that also has the benefit of showing us how much power we save by upgrading.

Can I put a 13 watt LED bulb (equivalent to 60 watt reg. Bulb in light output) into a "40 watt max" fixture? " "Can I put a 13 watt compact fluor.

Bulb (equivalent to 60 watt reg. Bulb in light output) into a "40 watt max" fixture? " "I have a ceiling light fixture that says 60 watt light bulb max. Can I use a 100 watt bulb?

What are the dangers? " "OK to use 60 watt bulb in floor lamp (switch lo-hi-off) that says use 150 watt max? Will the 60 watt do harm?

Can I put a 13 watt LED bulb (equivalent to 60 watt reg. Bulb in light output) into a "40 watt max" fixture?

Can I put a 13 watt compact fluor. Bulb (equivalent to 60 watt reg. Bulb in light output) into a "40 watt max" fixture?

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.