Fluorescent Lights

The fluorescent light in the kitchen got dim the other day. Bad bulbs? Bad ballast? Who knows? Bulbs are easier, so we'll replace those first. At home depot it looks like they have four packs for $30 and single bulbs for $10. Yowzer! Then I notice that the $30 packs actually contain ten bulbs, and the $10 price is for two bulbs, unless you want a two foot long bulb, then they really are $10 each. T-12 bulbs are marginally cheaper, as should be expected. The only people who benefit from the new technology are the people who make it. Unless you count saving 25 cents a year on electricity a benefit. (end sarcasm). I have a Home Depot cash card with $4 on it, so I am out the door with two new bulbs for $5 and change. I can live with that.

Clean the diffuser, change the bulbs, all okay. Go to pick up the old bulbs and I notice that one of them has broken.

Took a photo of the inside of the broken end, just in case you ever wondered what was inside. Looks like one of the wires and part of the filament band have vaporized.

Tried to use my old trick of sticking the end of the bulb in a paper bag and whacking it with my whacking stick, but the shattering exceeded the bounds of the bag.

Here's another view of the filament inside the end. The three wires all go to the metal band. Nothing is connected to the little glass capsule.


P.S. Blogger: How do you spell fluorescent? When I first entered the title, I spelled it with a U, but the spell checker complained. Okay, I'll take out the U, now spell checker is happy. I know I have written about fluorescent lights before, so lets run a search and see what we find. Without a U we find nothing. So I do a search on Google, and Google wants to know if I mean fluorescent (with a U). I run another search on my blog  for fluorescent, this time with a U, and a get a whole bunch of results. Now when I come back here and correct the spelling of fluorescent, spell checker does not complain. Effing Google. Plus what EB said.