I have some naive questions about light bulbs that maybe someone here knows how to answer.
(1) What is the theoretical voltage-current relationship for a light bulb? I realize this depends on aspects of its construction, including the material the filament is made of. (2) The resistance of a light bulb apparently increases with voltage but not linearly. What is the theoretical voltage-resistance relationship of a light bulb? (3) What mechanisms explain the relationship among voltage, current and resistance of a light bulb and how do I compute them? For example, how do the temperature and the work function of the filament and the resulting electron cloud around the filament behave and how do I compute their effect, if any, on current and resistance.
These questions derive from my continuing attempts to read Kloeffler's book, Electron Tubes. I realized that the problems I was having with it were all my own fault, caused by plunging into the chapter I was interested in instead of reading the book carefully from the beginning. Often I can get away with it, but Kloeffler's book is written a lot more carefully than I realized and even the parts that I considered too trivial to read contain some information that is necessary for understanding the conventions of rest of the book. So, now I'm starting to appreciate the book. In particular, it is nice to see that he starts with light bulbs to illustrate his graphic techniques. I'll refer to a light bulb as a "unode". But he has no theoretical discussion of the characteristics of unodes and I would like to fill that lacuna.
Ignorantly, Allan Adler snipped-for-privacy@zurich.ai.mit.edu
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