How Do Fluorescent Lights Fixtures Work?
How Fluorescent Lightbulbs Are Structured To understand fluorescent light fixtures, you first have to understand fluorescent bulbs. A fluorescent bulb is a tube filled with argon gas and a bit of mercury vapor. There is an electrode on each side of the tube and a phosphor coating around the inside surface. How Fluorescent Bulbs Work When the light is turned on, electrons flow through the gas from one electrode to the other. When these electrons bump into the mercury molecules, they excite the mercury, moving some of its electrons to a higher energy level. The mercury electrons then discharge this energy, shooting out ultraviolet photons–small particles of light. These photons strike the phosphor surface, which absorbs their energy. A bit of this energy is wasted and turned into heat, but the rest is shot out again, this time as visible photons of light. How the Lamp Starts the Bulb The gas in fluorescent bulbs does not have many free electrons floating around, so electricity can not f
