Question: how are liightbulbs made

Stephen Davitt answered on 15 Nov 2016:

The three main types of lightbulbs are Filament bulbs, flourescent bulbs and LEDs,

Filament bulbs work by heating up a small piece of wire called the filament until it is very hot by passing electricity through it, this causes the atoms inside to shake and move which causes thermal radiation or ‘heat light’. They are really nice light to look at as they are like the suns light but they are very inefficient and take a lot of energy to power.

Flourescent bulbs work slightly different, they use a gas in the tube, this gas is excited by electricity in a cold way so that the atoms inside do not heat up, but their electrons move, in order to relax the atoms needs to release the energy which they do as light, this is called atomic emission. They are far more efficient than filament bulbs but people say the light from them looks very ‘cold’.

The newest form of bulb is the LED or ‘light emitting diode’, this is formed with two pieces of silicon or other material are sandwiched together to form something called a p-n junction, one side has extra electrons, the other side has extra atoms that are missing an electron, when we apply electricity to the LED the electrons and atoms can recombine releasing light, this is a type of atomic emission

Sorry if some of that is still a bit confusing, but hopefully you get the main points