Light Bulbs

Sophie Zifcak — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 06:09:28 +0000

Picture your favorite place to sit. It is likely next to a sun-filled window or in a cozy spot next to a lamp. Think about the lamps in your living room or the antique glow of a city café. Now think about places that are unpleasant: Safeway, hospital waiting rooms, the DMV. The reason we like the sun, candlelight, and fireplaces is the same reason we like incandescent lighting. The reason we feel uneasy with institutional lighting is the same reason we resist putting compact fluorescent lights in our bedrooms and living rooms. We’ve all been inundated with “proof” that incandescent bulbs are bad for the earth, and that switching is so worth the energy and cost savings that our love of incandescence is just nostalgia-laden selfishness. But never is it that simple.

Chicken Processing Plant, China, 2005, image by Edward Burtynsky

Compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) use 75% less energy to power and have up to 10 times the life span. You get 8,000 hours of light compared to 800. CFLs win the efficiency of use contest, but to this day three out of every four sockets in the U.S. still contain the least efficient bulb available on the market, the 100-year-old incandescent bulb. Clearly there’s more at hand than energy efficiency.

The warm company of a good lamp. Film still from In the Mood for Love (2000) by Wong Kar Wai.

America is hesitating at the register on CFLs partly because they cost more money up front, and partly because they are ugly. The cheapest CFLs cast a universally unflattering, cold light, and while some are better than others, no CFL so far can replicate the warm, saturated glow of incandescents.

Apparently, we’re not up for changing the world if we have to change it to a creepy blue one.

Westinghouse ad for looks-enhancing bulbs.

THE FEELING OF LIGHT
There are two ways to think about the way light looks: its ‘color temperature’ and its ‘color rendering index’ — the way the light colors objects and surfaces. We read/feel incandescent bulbs like we do flames, when it’s all the way up, we read it white (like the hottest center of a flame) and as it dims, we read it warm and yellow like the outer tip of candle light. Incandescents cast a saturating glow on the space around it.

We read/feel fluorescent bulbs the opposite: cold and blue, making everything around it seem dead and uninviting. That dimmer switch is no help either, fluorescent light only becomes colder and eerier the dimmer the bulb gets.

When light bulbs needed to be advertised. Vintage ads from Philips.

When buying CFLs, talk to someone who works at the hardware store, or just buy a few different brands, some different wattages, some bright white, some daylight, some soft white and see what looks best to you in your space.

Mixing incandescents with fluorescents can work well to soften the harshness of CFLs, but mixing CFL brands and colors could produce a rather unsettling effect, so be systematic. Also, techniques are improving and new CFLs more closely mimic the visual effect of incandescent light in bulb appearance and light color quality.

HOLD YOUR BREATH
It is worth noting that CFLs don’t fulfill all their claims. Price pressures and government subsidies compromise quality. A large number of CFL bulbs are shipped with faulty ballasts, so they don’t last as long as they claim.

Uncle Sam testing light bulbs, 1938, Harris & Ewing Collection, image via Shorpy.

Shoddy, and also unsafe. Fluorescent light is created by exited mercury vapor racing back and forth. Mercury is a poison that affects the nervous system, endocrine glands, kidneys and other organs. Symptoms vary with severity, but they all suck and should be avoided. There’s less mercury in a CFL bulb than a watch battery, and way less than a thermometer, but there are more of them, and they break. If you break a light bulb, the EPA advises you to evacuate the room of humans and animals, shut the broken pieces into an airtight container and dispose of it in a properly designated landfill (to keep the mercury from leaching into our soil and water).

Basically, we can only handle CFLs in rooms that can be ventilated and easily evacuated, or risk human and puppy hazard.

Besides individual and environmental dangers, there’s a human cost to CFLs: Closing incandescent factories shed jobs in the U.S., and Chinese workers are suffering Dickens-style health problems from working in CFL factories.

Death warmed over with a hotter color rendering index. Vintage ad from General Telephone & Electronics.

As if that’s not enough, more energy is expended making and using CFLs. They don’t do the two-for-one room heating that incandescents do, so gains there are off-set to some degree by higher heating costs. A Danish study also found that it took 1.8 kilowatt hours of electricity to assemble a CFL compared to 0.11 kilowatt hours to assemble an incandescent bulb. The bulbs are also heavier and take more energy and money to transport.

These factors need to be considered when claiming that compact fluorescent lighting is leading the way to an energy efficient future.

Luckily scientists aren’t so quick to give up on incandescent lighting. Improvements aren’t far in the horizon and hybrids are trickling out into the market. They may not be quite as energy efficient as CFLs claim to be, but neither are CFLs.

FURTHER READING
Reduced mercury bulbs, Metropolis Mag
Can Incandescent Bulbs Compete on Efficiency? The New York Times
Plumen, the designer energy-saving light bulb
GE Hybrid Light Bulb Solves CFL Issues, CNet News
We considered neither the climate change-denying nor the libertarian aspects of CFLs, but here it is from the New York Times’ Room for Debate section: The Politicized Light Bulb

Vintage Oak Board

Sebastian Kaufmann — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 18:47:27 +0000

Thin cutting boards are used in Germany as a plate, especially for breakfast, or as a small serving dish. This board fits a sandwich perfectly, with just enough room for a bit of mayonnaise, ketchup or mustard on the side. It’s also great if you want to cut your sandwich, fruit or other food into bite-size pieces. Cutting into wood instead of a porcelain is much easier on the knife (and the ears).

Since it’s made out of wood, there’s also no danger of it breaking when dropped on the floor. Because it’s so thin it’s really nice to handle, light and easy to wash.

: Cutting board, side view

But being thin doesn’t only have advantages. When carelessly left in water it will warp much faster. I forgot it a few times in the sink but managed to warp it back to its old shape with steam and pressure. This may be in part because it is at least 40 or more years old.

It is also still in good shape because it is made out of oak. Oak is a fairly dense, strong, hard wood, and its high tannin content prevents fungal attack, so nasty molds don’t grow in the grain. In fact, from the 16th to the 19th centuries, Oak was used to make armed ships.

Despite this, the wood isn’t so hard that it’ll ruin you knife — the hundreds of little slices on the surface is proof that the wood isn’t needlessly dulling the edge of the knife with every cut. This board belonged to my grandparents and eating off them is one of my earliest childhood memories.

Whisk Broom

Sebastian Kaufmann — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 08:17:03 +0000

I found this whisk broom at a flea market a couple of years ago. It’s made in the 1920s and I’m still using today. For something with no other purpose that to sweep away dirt, I’m amazed at the craftsmanship that went into it — it’s durable, with sturdy bristles that don’t snap or fray, that are bound so neatly and tightly with twine and metal wire.

Whisk Broom Circa 1920, flea market find.

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Light Bulbs

Vintage Oak Board

Whisk Broom