Invention Guides

halogen lamps and lasers??

im doing a timeline of inventions for school and need to know the pros and cons of halogen lamps and the pros and cons of lasers?

Public Comments

1. Halogen lamps are pretty crappy if you want to make a hologram. OTOH, illuminating your living room with a laser is not that great an idea, either. :-)
2. never touch a halogen lamp bulb and never look at a laser
3. Sunlight and incandescent bulbs are largely continuous spectrum. halogen lamps are a kind of incandescent bulb, which can operate at a higher temperature, leading to a slight increase in efficiency,. The higher temp can pose a fire risk. The higher temp will also cause the glass/quartz to react negativity with grease from fingerprints (why you shouldn't touch halogen bulbs with fingers!) Lasers' light (like light from other discharge lamps) is made of a number of discrete colours/wavelength. Lasers used to only be capable of producing light of a single wavelength ie monochromatic light, but newer laser materials/technologies allow the light to consists of a couple of wavelengths. If you want the special properties you can utilise with monochromatic light, it's easily filtered out. Laser light is also coherent, which gives it some very special properties. I leave it to wikipedia/other to explain. Lasers very good if you send the beam a long way without it spreading out, as the lasers "rays" are very nearly parallel. Lasers tend to need a large energy input to produce a moderate light output power. They're not that efficient, as light sources, but sometimes the special properties of the light makes it, and more, up.