Try it on paper first. A hint, the key idea and the worked solution are here when you need them.
A tungsten filament lamp is marked , . These ratings hold when the filament is glowing at its working temperature of . The resistance of tungsten rises with temperature according to , where is the resistance at and . Treat as constant over the whole range. The lamp has been off for a long time in a room at . A student switches it on across a supply of and wonders why lamps so often fail at the moment of switching on rather than while they glow steadily.
Assume that the supply voltage stays at and that the connecting wires have no resistance. Work with the formula as given, and use it for the filament only. The lamp is the only thing connected to the supply, and a filament is a coil of thin tungsten wire that is heated to a bright white glow by the current in it.
Have you tried it?
Work it out on paper first. It is fine to get stuck or make a mistake: that is how we learn. When you are ready, go through the solution one step at a time, and check each step against your own.
(a) Working current. .
(b) Hot resistance. .
(c) Cold resistance. , and . So .
(d) Switch-on current. . This is times the working current.
(e) Switch-on power. .
Answer: (a) . (b) . (c) . (d) . (e) .
Check. Power at a fixed voltage goes as , so the switch-on power should be the rated power times the factor : . The currents agree in the same way.
Watch out. The marked values belong to the hot filament. If you use them as the cold resistance, you miss the large first surge. If you multiply by the factor instead of dividing, you get for the cold filament, which is absurd. The surge heats the filament quickly, so the current falls to its working value within a fraction of a second.
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