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Chapter 6. Parts of a Simple Lightbulb

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Thomas Edison’s light bulbs are the simplest types of light bulbs. They have 3 basic parts: a glass globe, a filament, and a screw base. These light bulbs are called incandescent light bulbs because “incandescent” means creating light by being heated.

Powerful Light: Modern-day incandescent light bulbs can last 750-2,000 hours. That might sound like a lot, but LED light bulbs can last 40,000-50,000 hours.

The glass globe, filament, and screw base combine to create an incandescent light bulb. The glass globe wraps all the parts of the bulb and provides a covering so that nothing can catch fire from the heat from the filament. A gas is put inside the glass globe that helps the filament create light for a long time.

The filament is the small metal coil that at the center of the bulb. The filament uses the electrical current to create light. The filament is made to resist the flow of electricity. As it begins to heat up, the filament creates light.

The incandescent light bulb was becoming popular, but Thomas Edison wanted to make it better and more efficient. So, Edison invented a carbon filament lamp by putting carbon on a piece of thread. This metal covered thread was called a filament. This created a light bulb that would be able to provide light for 13 hours. Eventually, Edison used threads from bamboo to create a stronger light bulb. It could illuminate up to a couple hundred hours! (Today, light bulbs can last thousands of hours!!)

The base’s most important job is to connect the electrical current to the light bulb. The base also protects the parts of the bulb, like the contact wires. These contact wires cannot be damaged because they allow a constant flow of electricity to the filament of the bulb.