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Why does an electric light bulb nearly always burn out just as you turn on the light, almost never while the light is shining?

Short Answer

Expert verified

After turning on the bulb the temperature of the filament goes to very high at an instance. This causes the filament to expand.

The filament weakens by the time. Thus the expansion of filament and increasing temperature causes the bulb to burn out

Step by step solution

01

Filament in a bulb

The word filament refers to the wire or thread that lights up within the bulb when it is switched on.

Tungsten is used as filament in an electric bulb.

02

Understand the use of a filament in a bulb

After turning on the bulb the temperature of the filament goes to very high at an instance. This causes the filament to expand.

The filament weakens over time. Thus the expansion of filament and increasing temperature causes the bulb to burn out.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

You want to produce three 1.00-mm-diameter cylindrical wires,

each with a resistance of 1.00 Ω at room temperature. One wire is gold, one

is copper, and one is aluminum. Refer to Table 25.1 for the resistivity

values. (a) What will be the length of each wire? (b) Gold has a density of1.93×10-4kgm3.

What will be the mass of the gold wire? If you consider the current price of gold, is

this wire very expensive?

In the circuit shown in Fig. E26.20, the rate at which R1 is dissipating electrical energy is 15.0 W. (a) Find R1 and R2. (b) What is the emf of the battery? (c) Find the current through both R2 and the 10.0 Ω resistor. (d) Calculate the total electrical power consumption in all the resistors and the electrical power delivered by the battery. Show that your results are consistent with conservation of energy.

Consider the circuit of Fig. E25.30. (a)What is the total rate at which electrical energy is dissipated in the 5.0-Ω and 9.0-Ω resistors? (b) What is the power output of the 16.0-V battery? (c) At what rate is electrical energy being converted to other forms in the 8.0-V battery? (d) Show that the power output of the 16.0-V battery equals the overall rate of consumption of electrical energy in the rest of the circuit.

Fig. E25.30.

An emf source with E = 120 V, a resistor with R = 80.0 Ω, and a capacitor with C = 4.00 µF are connected in series. As the capacitor charges, when the current in the resistor is 0.900 A, what is the magnitude of the charge on each plate of the capacitor?

A typical small flashlight contains two batteries, each having an emf of1.5V, connected in series with a bulb having resistance17Ω. (a) If the internal resistance of the batteries is negligible, what power is delivered to the bulb? (b) If the batteries last for1.5hwhat is the total energy delivered to the bulb? (c) The resistance of real batteries increases as they run down. If the initial internal resistance is negligible, what is the combined internal resistance of both batteries when the power to the bulb has decreased to half its initial value? (Assume that the resistance of the bulb is constant. Actually, it will change somewhat when the current through the filament changes, because this changes the temperature of the filament and hence the resistivity of the filament wire.)

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