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Friday, October 11, 2024
Here’s How Neon Lights Work
TwistedSifter: We might have moved on from our collective obsession with neon lights here in America (though if you have kids, I assure you they have not gotten over it), but they do still have a place and a purpose.
4 comments:
Ella S
said...
I didn’t know that neon glows red but can be different colors depending on the shape and tint of the glass - that’s super interesting! I knew vaguely how neon lights work but I didn’t know how the different colors worked. My main impression is that neon lights are expensive; I was working on a play once (Marie Antoinette but like a funky version with some funky creative unusual design) were the director wanted a LET THEM EAT CAKE neon sign built into a gray brick wall, and we definitely were not about to buy a custom neon sign since this was at my very small high school, so what we ended up doing was routing the letters into a piece of wood that became the “lid” to a light box with LEDs in it, and then getting a heat gun and those super chunky glue sticks and we melted the glue sticks enough to be sticky ish and lay them in the holes cut in the ply. When the LEDs inside the box were turned on, the gluesticks glowed and it actually looked pretty much like a neon sign more or less. The sign then went on to hang in the AP US History classroom for many years after and I think it is still there :)
Before reading this article, I never thought much about neon lights and the fact that it uses neon (crazy I know). I found this article to be very informative and super interesting to read. I think it’s crazy that they can last up to 40 years. I never knew that the default color of neon lights is red. That does make sense to me, especially when I picture a neon light, but I wouldn’t have guessed that the shape and tint of the glass is what changes the color. I wonder, when they talk about the shape of the glass, does the diameter of the tube change the color?
This is super cool, I had no idea how neon lights work. I find this super interesting because I think the science behind lighting is super cool and fun. They are a lot more complex than I thought, and can last a really, really long time. 30 to 40 years is an insane amount of time for a neon light to last. I also found it so interesting that the shape of the glass that the photons flow through helps determine the color of light that is seen. I do not own any neon lights, but I do own led lights, projector lights, and fairy lights and they make a super cool addition to my room, so I think I should add neon lights to the mix. These lights are also super old, they were created over 100 years ago which is so crazy and so cool. This was very interesting to learn about.
This was a pretty interesting informational article about the inner workings of neon lights. Georges Claude, a French engineer, incorporated neon gas into a sign in 1912, making it the first neon sign. With electricity flowing through a glass tube, electrons speed up and break their orbit. This causes positively charged ions to bounce around in the tube. The excess energy caused by this phenomenon is carried away by photons that cause the red glow - though the light can appear differently depending on the glass used. This also isn’t limited to neon. It can occur with argon, helium, and xenon, too. I didn’t know that neon lights could last for up to 40 years (though that isn’t very common). I love seeing neon lights in theatrical productions, too - it really strengthens the setting from a visual standpoint.
4 comments:
I didn’t know that neon glows red but can be different colors depending on the shape and tint of the glass - that’s super interesting! I knew vaguely how neon lights work but I didn’t know how the different colors worked. My main impression is that neon lights are expensive; I was working on a play once (Marie Antoinette but like a funky version with some funky creative unusual design) were the director wanted a LET THEM EAT CAKE neon sign built into a gray brick wall, and we definitely were not about to buy a custom neon sign since this was at my very small high school, so what we ended up doing was routing the letters into a piece of wood that became the “lid” to a light box with LEDs in it, and then getting a heat gun and those super chunky glue sticks and we melted the glue sticks enough to be sticky ish and lay them in the holes cut in the ply. When the LEDs inside the box were turned on, the gluesticks glowed and it actually looked pretty much like a neon sign more or less. The sign then went on to hang in the AP US History classroom for many years after and I think it is still there :)
Before reading this article, I never thought much about neon lights and the fact that it uses neon (crazy I know). I found this article to be very informative and super interesting to read. I think it’s crazy that they can last up to 40 years. I never knew that the default color of neon lights is red. That does make sense to me, especially when I picture a neon light, but I wouldn’t have guessed that the shape and tint of the glass is what changes the color. I wonder, when they talk about the shape of the glass, does the diameter of the tube change the color?
This is super cool, I had no idea how neon lights work. I find this super interesting because I think the science behind lighting is super cool and fun. They are a lot more complex than I thought, and can last a really, really long time. 30 to 40 years is an insane amount of time for a neon light to last. I also found it so interesting that the shape of the glass that the photons flow through helps determine the color of light that is seen. I do not own any neon lights, but I do own led lights, projector lights, and fairy lights and they make a super cool addition to my room, so I think I should add neon lights to the mix. These lights are also super old, they were created over 100 years ago which is so crazy and so cool. This was very interesting to learn about.
This was a pretty interesting informational article about the inner workings of neon lights. Georges Claude, a French engineer, incorporated neon gas into a sign in 1912, making it the first neon sign. With electricity flowing through a glass tube, electrons speed up and break their orbit. This causes positively charged ions to bounce around in the tube. The excess energy caused by this phenomenon is carried away by photons that cause the red glow - though the light can appear differently depending on the glass used. This also isn’t limited to neon. It can occur with argon, helium, and xenon, too. I didn’t know that neon lights could last for up to 40 years (though that isn’t very common). I love seeing neon lights in theatrical productions, too - it really strengthens the setting from a visual standpoint.
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