SCIENCE!! 💡 The science of light. NOT POLITICAL 😆

WOW! A lot of political light information from Sweden!

A full spectrum light such as the sun or an incandescent bulb does better. Since it has the full spectrum of light.

That's a sharp departure from a light bulb comparison.

Oh, and yeah, it's political, but light heartedly so. But will the comments allow it to remain so?

I meant the comments here, but there's that too.

The Political Science of light. Or, the similarity between light and a politician(both are unknowns). Quotes are from science articles:

- In an approximate way, light is both a particle and a wave. But in an exact representation, light is neither a particle nor a wave, but is something more complex.

- When we're thinking of light as being made of of particles, these particles are called “photons”. Photons have no mass, and each one carries a specific amount of energy.

- Light exhibits wave behaviour in phenomenon such as interference but particle behaviour in the photoelectric effect. How does light 'choose' where to be a wave and where to be a particle?

- In fact, light is not really a wave or a particle. It is what it is; it's this strange thing that we model as a wave or a particle in order to make sense of its behaviour, depending on the scenario of interest.

- In any event, the wave-or-particle nature is entirely up to you. Which nature you see is based on the experiment you use, not the photon itself.

www.flickr.com/photos/67205364@N06/sets/72157641713809804

Unfortunately Einstein is not around, one could pose the question to him - "What is light ?" Fair warning, the answer will be quite involved.

Some things are better left unexplained...or one could just accept Genesis 1:3 and be done with it.

Decent quality LEDs (the diodes) last a very, very long time IF they are kept cool.  A lot of cheap incandescent bulb replacements are made entirely of plastic, which is a poor heat sink.  These bulbs usually run very hot (at the diodes), which dramatically reduces their life.  Cheap LED diodes are less efficient as well, which means they produce more heat at a given light output.  If the bulbs are in a light fixture, heat dissipation is even worse.  I, too, have had many LED incandescent bulb replacements (e26 size) die within months.  Most were cheap, all plastic pieces of junk. 

Good LED lights, which almost always have some sort of a heat sink, active cooling, or thermal management circuitry, last many years, in my experience.  I've got 60w (6000 lumen) LED security light fixtures on the outside of my barn.  They run 9-15 hours a day, every day, and they have done so for 4 years. There are six in total, and none has died.  They are Sylvania brand commercial fixtures.  When I bought my house I installed LED retrofit kits in all of the recessed can lights, which had 65w incandescent bulbs or really awful compact fluorescents.  There are at least 20 of them throughout the house.  The LED retrofit kits have no bulb that can be replaced, so I made sure to buy good ones.  They've got Samsung brand LEDs and a big metal heat sink with fins.  Depending on the room, they are turned on anywhere from a few minutes (hallway), to 8-12 hours a day (living room).  Not one has failed in four years.   

The problem with good LED bulbs and fixtures is that they are expensive, so they have to last many years for the energy efficiency to result in any real savings.