Neon Lights Wholesale Suppliers in India
Neon Lights Wholesale Supplier in India
Neon lights are colorful, bright, and reliable, so you see them used in signs, displays, and even airport landing strips. Have you ever wondered how they work and how different colors of light are produced?
Key Takeaways: Neon Lights
A neon light contains a tiny amount of neon gas under
low pressure.
Electricity provides energy to strip electrons away from
neon atoms, ionizing them. Ions are attracted to terminals of the lamp,
completing the electric circuit.
Light is produced when neon atoms gain enough energy to
become excited. When an atom returns to a lower energy state, it releases a
photon (light).
How a Neon Light Works
You can make a fake neon sign yourself, but real
neon lights consist of a glass tube filled with a small amount (low pressure)
of neon gas. Neon is used because it is one of the noble gases.
One characteristic of these elements is that each atom has a filled electron
shell, so the atoms don't react with other atoms and it takes a lot of energy
to remove an electron.
There is an electrode at either end of the tube. A neon light actually works using either AC (alternating
current) or DC (direct current), but if DC current is used, the glow is only
seen around one electrode. AC current is used for most neon lights you see.
When an electric voltage is applied to the terminals (about
15,000 volts), enough energy is supplied to remove an outer electron from the
neon atoms. If there is not enough voltage, there will not be enough kinetic
energy for the electrons to escape their atoms and nothing will happen.
The positively charged neon atoms (cations) are attracted to the negative
terminal, while the free electrons are attracted to the positive terminal.
These charged particles, called plasma, complete the electric circuit of
the lamp.
So where does the light come from? Atoms in the tube are
moving around, hitting each other. They transfer energy to each other, plus a
lot of heat is produced. While some electrons escape their atoms, others gain
enough energy to become "excited". This means they have a higher
energy state. Being excited is like climbing a ladder, where an electron can be
on a particular rung of the ladder, not just anywhere on its length. The
electron can return to its original energy (ground state) by releasing that
energy as a photon (light). The color of the light that is produced depends on
how far apart the excited energy is from the original energy. Like the distance
between rungs of a ladder, this is a set interval. So, each excited electron of
an atom releases a characteristic wavelength of photon. In other words, each
excited noble gas releases a characteristic color of light. For neon, this is a
reddish-orange light.
How Other Colors of Light Are Produced
You see lots of different colors of signs, so you might
wonder how this works. There are two main ways of producing other colors of
light besides the orange-red of neon. One way is to use another gas or a
mixture of gases to produce colors. As mentioned earlier, each noble gas
releases a characteristic color of light. For example, helium glows pink,
krypton is green, and argon is blue. If the gases are mixed,
intermediate colors can be produced.
The other way to produce colors is to coat the glass with a
phosphor or other chemical that will glow a certain color when it is energized.
Because of the range of coatings available, most modern lights no longer use
neon, but are fluorescent lamps that rely on a mercury/argon discharge and a
phosphor coating. If you see a clear light glowing in a color, it's a noble gas
light.
Another way to change the color of the light, although it's
not used in light fixtures, is to control the energy supplied to the light.
While you usually see one color per element in a light, there are actually
different energy levels available to excited electrons, which correspond to a
spectrum of light that element, can produce.
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