Home Repair forum - Re: Defective Bulb Tripping A Ckt. Breaker: How Possible ?

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Re: Defective Bulb Tripping A Ckt. Breaker: How Possible ?

dpb

2006-10-31, 1:25 pm

Robert11 wrote:
....
> Wife turned on a hall light switch last night, big flash by one of the hall
> lights, and the ckt breaker tripped.
....
> Question: I can't imagine how anything, like e.g. a broken filament
> perhaps, can short out the circuit.
....

Actually, it's fairly common w/ incandescent bulbs, amd not only
cheapies although they _may_ be more prone, I have insufficient data to
confirm it...

A couple of mechanisms -- one, the "hot" element breaks and falls into
the neutral base and poof! -- short circuit w/ a momentary high
temperature which cause a brief vaporization. Another is that as the
element is lit it is losing material until it thins to such a small
cross sectional area the temperature rises until an
ionization/vaporization flash is created as it shorts/arcs across to
the base.

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