Diminishing Dia. Fiber Optics for Increasing Intensity Light

A math guy suggested blanketing the surface of fluorescent tubes with fiber optics to increase the effective surface area -- and light -- per unit volume of gas.

I said that would save the light otherwise lost due to spiraled and folded fluorescent tubes and turn all the light in one direction but it would still only result in a big area low intensity light source.

Unless fiber optics can be made to channel light down a fiber of diminishing diameter.

Do tapered fibers exist?

My guess is a lot of light would bounce back to where it came from.

Bret Cahill

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BretCahill
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In article , snipped-for-privacy@aol.com mentioned...

I think that the whole idea of fluos is that they can be made cheaply anbd put out a lot more light than incandescent. Going thru the process of trying to improve them defeats the cheapness, because you start adding complexity and that costs a lot. And they have a long but limited lifespan, so if the price is too high, then they won't pay for themselves over their lifetime. That's the wwhole reason why incandescents only last for a thousand hours, because it would cost more for the added electricity than a replacement light bulb.

Rather than try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, your energy should be concentrated on developing a light source that sidesteps the disadvantages of the existing light sources. One I read about a while back was a lamp that uses molten sulfur or something like that. It was supposed to be more efficient than fluos and others. See Don's lighting web page for info on that one and a lot of good info on all these other neat gizmos.

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Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun

I'm guessing anything that has to do with electrical lighting has been pretty well investigated, the lightbulb being the very icon of invention.

Wats . . .

My initial concern wasn't cost because that usually drops dramatically with volume.

I was just wondering what was possible.

In any event it's WAY too late in the day for Thomas Edison style light bulbs to appear in flashlights -- the ultimate consumer item.

Bret Cahill

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BretCahill

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