Saturday, December 23, 2006

Christmas Lights

I have some odd fascination with Christmas lights. This time, I'm wondering what will happen if you put two blinker bulbs on the same string of lights. Blinker bulbs have to warm up before they start working, so the operation is temperature dependent. If two blinkers are present, will they mess with each other's temperatures? What will the end result be? Any guesses before I give the results of an experiment (I'm looking at you, Steve and Nate)?

5 comments:

Nate said...

I do not have enough familiarity with the subject to comforatbly make up a theory, so I will do what theorists in this spot should do (but often don't do) and deault to the experimentalists.

Anonymous said...

On first thought, I would say that it would depend if they were connected in series or parallel. In series, they would have the same current and would probably heat up as usual. In parallel, the splitting of the current may cause them to take longer to heat up.

Although that's probably just for DC, not AC, so I think I need to think some more.

Jeff said...

So what happened is the lights blinked at a faster rate, but it was somewhat randomized instead of consistent.

Nate said...

Parallel wiring, then?

Nate said...

If you take a FFT, do you get two peaks?