The first person to ever invent the light bulb was Thomas Edison. It allegedly took over 1,000 tries for him to create the filament for the light bulb. Ever since, the light bulb has been one of the most commonly used and least thought about household appliance ever invented. They are actually very complicated to understand and difficult to make.

The most obvious use of light is in the ordinary, everyday iridescent light bulb. The way a light bulb works is that electricity is run through a filament, and that creates friction, and which in turn heats it. The filament has so much heat energy in it that it begins to give off photons. That is what makes the filament glow. This whole process takes places in a vacuum, inside of the actual bulb. Different light bulbs need different amounts of power, or are different sizes with different length filaments.

Not all light bulbs work that way, however. Florescent light bulbs work by running an electrical current through a special type of gas that gets ‘excited’. In its ‘excited’ form, the gas molecules rush around and bump into each other. That friction, like with the filament in a normal bulb, creates energy and launches photons everywhere. With florescent bulbs, instead of a glowing filament, the actual gas glows.

Those are the two main types of light bulbs; iridescent and florescent. They are both used for different purposes and have different qualities. Iridescent bulbs are cheaper, give off more energy as heat, and have a shorter life. Florescent bulbs are brighter, give off less energy as heat, have a longer life, and are usually slightly more expensive. Iridescent bulbs are also able to be manufactured much smaller than florescent bulbs can, and so are used in flashlights and Christmas lights. Florescent bulbs are used in hallway lights and ceiling lights because they are brighter and need less changing.