Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Inside an LED bulb

Their light isn't as nice as that from incandescents, but they are good for science demos (diffraction grating slides are unbreakable, unlike prisms) and they last. Usually. This one was in the same fixture as an incandescent which has lasted for quite a few years.

It isn't easy getting everything in focus at once, but the ugly solder blobs ar attached to a bit of printed circuit board that almost looks like it is delaminating, although poking it with a knife didn't break it. There are spatterings of solder on the board nearby, and that white stuff on the edge of the solder is some kind of powder. Osram brand, made in China. I suspect the soldering job was manual.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm finding the high-CRI LEDs to be OK lately -- but as you're doing spectrograms of the light generated, what do you think? Most CFL bulbs were spectrally spiky, but with spikes in the right places and levels that things were sort-of the right color.

I'm still tempted to put in incandescents during heating season over my reading chair. Any heat generated is not "waste heat", it is merely offsetting the use of my gas-furnace. And as my local electrical utility has such a high proportion of hydro as the supply source, it's greener to heat with light-bulbs instead of gas. (if a bit more expensive)

james said...

The spectrographs the kids look at aren't point sources, just overhead LEDs or fluorescents. I could try having them look at a hole in cardboard to approximate that--so they see discrete spots instead of bands of the same color. The LED light is better balanced than it was at first--at least for the inexpensive models I've been buying. But it isn't the same as the incandescent, though I'm not artist enough to say how the blackbody spectrum feels different from the LED approximation. Why is easy--some frequencies are missing.