When the world ends in 2012

[Apple]

It will be caused by a single CFL bulb.

Just thought y'all should know.

Yes, I'm at work and I'm "geeking" out today, but a single CFL bulb has already caused hours of confusion among some coworkers. It involves the difference between ac (like you have at home) and dc (like a battery) current, some fancy explosions and the domino effect.

[KaraBoo]

Woohoo! Sounds like you're having fun Apple - explosions would certainly wake my office up right about now!! LOL!!

[Apple]

Thanks, I am

Oh, another BIG key to this I forgot to mention is that incandescents will be outlawed in 2012.

[The J]

You should put this stuff on YouTube.

[DebMD (banned)]

2012

The world will live on.


IMHO

[DebMD (banned)]

I'm avoiding all electricity for [CFL/Or any] lite bulbs.

[KaraBoo]

So - why did the bulb cause confusion with coworkers? Just curious to know. I love explosions!

[Bluerobin]

It will probably be a bulb in my house when I, Crabby and the Beckster are all flatulent,

[TrixAre4Kids]

I'm laying in a stock of fluorescents.

[Peace Of Mind]

Jan 11, 2011 12:52:56 GMT -5 Apple said:

Thanks, I am

Oh, another BIG key to this I forgot to mention is that incandescents will be outlawed in 2012.

NOOOOOOOO!! <<POM runs to the store to stock up on incandescents>>

[ken a.k.a OMK]

"Oh, another BIG key to this I forgot to mention is that incandescents will be outlawed in 2012."

IKEA stopped selling them.

CFL's do not work with dimmers or some light timing (auto on/off) systems.

[Bluerobin]

The one they didn't tell you is the 4' florescent tubes will be outlawed in 2014. There is no replacement as of now.

[Apple]

Jan 11, 2011 13:12:20 GMT -5 KaraBoo said:

So - why did the bulb cause confusion with coworkers? Just curious to know. I love explosions!

I'll try not to be too geeky
I work in a very old facility where you can't rely on any of the prints (as people update things they don't document the changes, pretty frustrating). There is a lot of "mystery" about how things actually work sometimes.
We have a "kid" who works in our electric shop who's main job is changing lightbulbs and little stuff like that (no "hot" work, he's not an electrician). He'll often decide he knows how to do things better than we do and will do things his way without checking to see if it will work (it can be pretty dangerous depending on what he does).
Yesterday he decided to change our emergency lights to CFL bulbs instead of incandescents so he wouldn't have to change them as often (he'd been told not to do it when he did it about a year ago, someone "caught" him again this time). Normally the emergency lights are wired to AC so there is no issue. However, if we lose power (AC) to the plant (it has happened) all the lights will go out except those that are wired as emergency lights. These will swap over to run on DC during the AC outage.
Problem is, many CFL lamps cannot run on DC. Some will just not turn on, some will melt, some will explode (some will also work, depending on the manufacturer). Depending on the conditions, the blown light can trip a breaker or, in extreme cases, carry back to the batteries and cause an issue there (again, extreme but possible, so that is where the end of the world happens
Here, some people thought the emergency lights must "be in a special socket," some thought that they would run on a special type of AC voltage, some thought they were always DC, and some thought (correctly) that the power would swap to DC. Of course, we can't trust the print, so several people were researching it to see what would happen and how it REALLY worked (something we do way too often).
After we found out how it really works, we hooked a light fixture up to a test board. One brand worked fine, one would not turn on, and the other blew up and blew the fuse. Right now we have let the people doing the ordering know that we need to only stock the brand that works. Of course, after a while, no one will remember why we went with this brand, and they will order something else. So, if we ever do lose power we might be completely in the dark, we might have some lights or we might get to have a bunch of little explosions

[Apple]

On large generators that have a "run light" it will (can) also cause them to go wonky and they won't run right.

[Befferz]

Jan 11, 2011 15:30:55 GMT -5 Apple said:

So, if we ever do lose power we might be completely in the dark,

In more ways than one!

Jan 11, 2011 15:30:55 GMT -5 Apple said:

we might have some lights or we might get to have a bunch of little explosions

Or the world might end.

[Sum Dum Gai]

Don't worry about it. The world as we know it isn't going to end until the distributed software the military uses to fight infection becomes self aware. I just saw a TV special about it over the weekend.

[KaraBoo]

Apple - without me being an engineer of any type (I'm just a lowly Admin Assist) - I understood your post perfectly!

I actually help out the maintenance department of my hospital quite regularly and we also have generator back up power, so this makes perfect sense. We had a planned shut down of regular power several years back to upgrade our electrical plant. The outage was for 48 hours over a weekend on the (historically) lowest patient count weekend of the year. We planned for months and everyone was still surprised at how much didn't work properly when the actual shut down happened.

I also agree that in the future, someone somewhere will decide to go with a different brand without knowing the facts (thank you Corporate!).

Thank you for taking the time to type all of that - I enjoyed the post very much.

[ummboutthat]

SOOOO..... how many blondes does it take to change a light bulb?

[TD2K]

It will be caused by a single CFL bulb.


No doubt broken by a Snow Leopard