Jeff Wisnia wrote:
wrote:

snipped

Some of these ideas can be demonstrated by experimenting with bulbs
in
series, which is effectively a single filament divided into
segments.
Say you have a car battery (12V) and 5 to 10 identical automotive
bulbs
in series. snip

I've never noticed that effect, but it seems possible.

I'm guessing it was holiday lighting (Xmas tree strings) you were
experimenting with when you were around age 6, right?

I did some of that with Xmas lites, yes, but my parents indulged me
with electrical stuff from the hardware store as well. I had a bunch or
light sockets, battery holders, switches, wires etc. that I could play
with, even some "house current" stuff. I only blew the fuses a few
times. I also dumpster dived a lot, for example I'd scrounge phonograph
turntables as flywheels for DC motor/generator systems, which taught me
something about regenerative braking.

I'm having a hard time visualizing what ten 12 volt bulbs across a 12

volt battery would end up doing. Wouldn't seem like there'd be enough

voltage available to produce anything other than infrared "uniform
brightness" with just 1.2 volts across each bulb, or did you misspeak

about the battery's voltage?

The bulbs are a dull red-to-orange at 1/10th to 1/5th voltage, and it
takes one-to-several seconds to warm up to final brightness, but they
generally do light. I said "5 to 10 bulbs" because it depends somewhat
on the particular traits of the bulbs. By adding more in series, each
runs at a lower voltage and takes longer to come to final brightness,
such that your eye has enough time to follow the changing luminosity,
up to the point where there are too many to see them light at all.

Oh, and my face is red for geting lured into agreeing that triacs
"switch on" at zero crossings. I know better, but it's been so long
since I built anything with triacs that I forgot that they "latch on"

once triggered and have to wait for a current zero crossing to drop
out.

Yeah, well, the memory is the second thing to go, and I can't remember
what the first one is.

%mod%