What Determines the Color of a Xenon Bulb?
Xenon bulbs have been around a while, but have revolutionized the automotive headlight industry. You might have noticed these headlights -- they often have almost a bluish tint. It's not really the bulbs that are blue -- but the gas heated inside them. Does this Spark an idea?
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About Xenon
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Xenon, a colorless and odorless gas (also one of the Nobel gases -- meaning inert -- since it does not interact with other gases typically). It was discovered in 1898 during an experiment; two chemists (Ramsay and Travers) heated air (turning it from gas to liquid). As the air was allowed to warm, gases boiled away -- first nitrogen, then argon and eventually oxygen. When the final .05 percent of liquid gas remained, a small portion was xenon. Ramsay and Travers named the element "xenon," from the Greek for "stranger."
Function
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Traditonal car headlights appear yellow compared to HID headlights. Xenon lamps, first developed during World War II in Germany, work simply: an electrical current passes between two electrodes surrounded by xenon gas (and sometimes other trace gases). As the gas gets hot and the electrons excite -- move -- light is created. The higher the temperature, the closer to blue or purple it appears. Conversely, lower temperatures tend toward yellow. High intensity headlights range in temperature from 3,000 Kelvins to 12,000 Kelvins (heat, not brightness, which is different).
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Benefits
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Xenon light technology is considered environmentally friendly; not only do they produce more light, but they are also significantly less energy-consuming. With high intensity discharge (HID) car headlights, better visibility in different conditions is obtainable by simply selecting a different "color" (temperature) bulb.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit bmw dynamic xenon headlight image by Jorge Moro from Fotolia.com headlights image by Christopher Hall from Fotolia.com
