Lighting - Lamps

Lamps

Commonly called 'light bulbs', lamps are the removable and replaceable part of a light fixture, which converts electrical energy into electromagnetic radiation. While lamps have traditionally been rated and marketed primarily in terms of their power consumption, expressed in watts, proliferation of lighting technology beyond the incandescent light bulb has eliminated the correspondence of wattage to the amount of light produced. For example, a 60 W incandescent light bulb produces about the same amount of light as a 13 W compact fluorescent lamp. Each of these technologies has a different efficacy in converting electrical energy to visible light. Visible light output is typically measured in lumens. This unit only quantifies the visible radiation, and excludes invisible infrared and ultraviolet light. A wax candle produces on the close order of 13 lumens, a 60 watt incandescent lamp makes around 700 lumens, and a 15-watt compact fluorescent lamp produces about 800 lumens, but actual output varies by specific design. Rating and marketing emphasis is shifting away from wattage and towards lumen output, to give the purchaser a directly applicable basis upon which to select a lamp.

Lamp types include:

• Ballast: A ballast is an auxiliary piece of equipment designed to start and properly control the flow of power to discharge light sources such as fluorescent and high intensity discharge (HID) lamps. Some lamps require the ballast to have thermal protection.
• fluorescent light: A tube coated with phosphor containing low pressure mercury vapor that produces white light.
• Halogen: High pressure incandescent lamps containing halogen gases such as iodine or bromine, increasing the efficacy of the lamp versus a plain incandescent lamp.
• Neon: A low pressure gas contained within a glass tube; the color emitted depends on the gas.
• Light emitting diodes: Light emitting diodes (LED) are solid state devices that emit light by dint of the movement of electrons in a semiconductor material.
• Compact fluorescent lamps: CFLs are designed to replace incandescent lamps in existing and new installations.