Incandescent lamp works by light emissions driven by heat, in other word by incandescence. A thin filament passes through by an electric current and heating the thin filament until it produces light. The enclosing glass lamp is used to prevent oxidation by preventing the oxygen in the air from reaching the hot filament. An incandescent lamp sometime is also called electric lamps. Incandescent lamps have a wide range of sizes and voltages. The voltage that incandescent lamps have varies from 1.5 volts to about 300 volts. The incandescent lamps is considered to have a low manufacturing cost, have no external regulation equipment and work well on either alternating current (AC) or direct current (DC). Because of all these advantages, the incandescent lamp is widely used in house lighting, commercial lighting, portable lighting, decoration and as lighting for advertisement.
Incandescent lamp can be use for other applications besides lighting. Other applications that can make a good use of incandescent lamp are heat generated incubators, heat lights for reptile tanks, infrared heating and drying processes for industries. Incandescent lamp can has its part in heating a building in a cold weather but incandescent lamp can increase energy usage by air conditioning systems in a hot climate by increasing the heat.
Incandescent light lamps are starting to be replaced gradually in many applications by other types of electric light such as high-intensity discharge lamps, fluorescent lamps, light emitting diodes (LED) and other lamps. Newer technologies are giving more visible light and less heat for the same amount of electrical energy. In favor to more energy-efficient lighting, some countries are in the process to phase out the use of incandescent light lamps.
Incandescent lamps are considered very inefficient. The first incandescent lamps used a carbon filament only had 1% efficiency in turning electricity into light. Tungsten is being used to replaced carbon as the material of the filament as the incandescent light technology improved over the years. Halogen element gas was also employed into the bulb allowing filaments to last longer. Through these improvements the incandescent lamps efficiency has been improved to 10% and the 90% is turned to heat.
