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David Nebenzahl

spake thus:

Ok, please don't mind me and my inexperience in home repair, my husband
and i just purchased our first home, and I am learning as I go.

So I tried to change the light in my kitchen, because the old one just
stopped working. So I go to the shop and buy myself a fancy new light,
get home, open the instructions and get to work. I hadn't even really
done anything yet, I was in the process of removing the old light bulb
from the old fixture and this big spark happened, and all the lights in
and near the kitchen went off. so i called my father in law and he
said to flip the switch in that circuit breaker box, and when i went to
do that, another spark, and everything turned off. Then he told me to
flip the main switch, which I did, and everything except the kitchen
and the room near the kitchen came back on. I am going to call an
electrician tomorrow, but i would really like to know what on earth
happened.

any help or insight would be greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance
for your time.

Pretty simple, really, though I can see how the fireworks show might
have rattled you a little bit: When you went to change the bulb, the
power was still on, and apparently you caused a short circuit when
unscrewing the bulb, which caused all the sparks. This caused the
circuit breaker to trip, which you should be grateful for, because
that's what's supposed to happen when there's a short circuit.

One thing's not clear: are you changing the light *fixture*, or just the
light *bulb*?

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