Light bulb filament a bright idea

What is the filament of a regular light bulb made of?

One of the things that keeps this job fun is the questions we get from faraway places, Chris.

A tiny coil of tungsten in your light bulb allows you to stay up past midnight reading mystery novels.

Looking for an answer to your question, we stumbled upon a little gem of a Web site that will tell you more about light bulbs than you probably ever want to know. It's "The Great Internet Light Bulb Book." To see it, click here:  www.misty.com/don/bulb1.html 

Don Klipstein has assembled a remarkable treatise on the history and physics of electric lighting. He'll explain, for example, how the little tungsten filament in an ordinary 100-watt bulb reaches a temperature of 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you want to know more about fluorescent bulbs or halogen lighting, he tells you about them, too.

Did you know that Thomas Edison experimented for two years to find a suitable material for a light bulb filament? His first successful light bulb used a filament made from burned sewing thread. Tungsten, which has the highest melting point of all metals, proved far more durable.

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