Re: Anyone tried Zenon bulbs?

[Brian Gracek <bgracek@cloudnet.com>]

>     Hi,   This is the day of many questions from Stefan.   Has anyone
>tried putting Xenon bulbs on the car?  These  are the headlight bulbs that
>are in the Mercedes, Porsche and a couple other  cares that are white not
>yellow.   They look really cool IMHO.   Thanks,   Stefan.

There is much confusion on this subject!  I have the Xenon charged filament
type lamps with NO change in output.

The zenon "bulbs" for our cars are simple Halogen Lamps with some Xenon gas
added (Xenon is one of the "noble gasses").  The High Intensity Discharge
lamps in those "expensive" cars are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, they use an arc
across a high voltage potential using ballast to create the high voltage
needed.  There is no fillament in the lamps at all, the high voltage across
the elecrode gap allows the arc to reach very high temperatures
(4200Kelvin, 3937 Degrees Celcius or  7124 degrees Farenheit!).  The
surface of our sun is around 4800 kelvin (*of course the core is millions
of degrees).  These lamps cost around $3000.00!  They have a light "ouput"
like a 150+ watt lamp with truer color (white light instead of yellowish).

*physics warning*

Black body radiation theory shows us that the hotter an object the shorter
the peak wavelength emitted  *lamba max* (higher the frequency of the
photon).  Red is a "cool" color and Blue-violet is a hot color (UltraViolet
is a very hot color).  Yellow is in the middle of the heat range.

The Filament in our conventional headlamps reach temps in the 2200K range
at most, so we see a yellow light.

Intensity of light is different from color, 100Watt and 55Watt lamps are of
simmilar color but there are more total photons from the 100Watt lamp.


***********************************************************
Brian M. Gracek			Saint Cloud, Minnesota, USA

"On the road of life"...There are 'windshields', and there are 'bugs'
		          (splat!)

		"Squeegees Wanted"