Answer 1:
A light bulb and an antenna both emit
electromagnetic energy--you are right on that
point. How and why they do it are very different,
and the kind of electromagnetic energy they emit
is very different. In an incandescent light
bulb (fluorescent and LED bulbs work differently),
an electric current is pushed through a filament
(wire), and the filament gets so hot that it
glows. (It gets hot because of high resistance,
which is like friction to electrons. So it gets
hot for about the same reason your hands get hot
when you rub them together hard.) Incandescent
bulbs waste a lot of energy, because they are
putting out a lot of heat and electromagnetic
energy other than visible light, including radio
waves. Antennas, on the other hand, emit or
receive very specific wavelengths of
electromagnetic radiation, and this calls very
different physics. (As a side note, the longer the
antenna, the longer the electromagnetic wave it is
tuned for, just like a longer guitar string plays
a lower note.) To send a signal using an antenna,
a current is run through the antenna,
but--different from a light bulb--the electricity
needs to be at a specific frequency; that is to
say, the electrons need to change direction very
often, thousands to trillions of times per second.
Also, there is very little resistance in an
antenna, and it heats up only by
accident. So, in a light bulb, a
high-resistance wire is being used as a heat
source that gives off light, and in an antenna, a
specially shaped wire with a very specific pattern
of electricity creates electromagnetic waves. The
shape and material seems similar (wire and thin
metal), and how you activate them seems similar
(running electricity through them), but the
details make them very different. Cheers, |
Answer 2:
The reason why you use an antenna for radio
waves and a filament for light is the relative
wave-length of the two waves. You arec orrect in
that they are both electro-magnetic waves, however
radio typically has a frequency between 100kHz and
100GHz so has wave lengths between 3km and 3mm.
Light in the green is about 500nm or
0.0005mmwavelength. You can indeed radiate light
with an antenna if you can make it 250nm long --
but this has only recently become possible with
nanoscopic fabrication. Normally, light emission
is restricted to chemical processes on the
molecular scale such as flame oxidation or
molecular vibration such as heat. In a filament, a
current creates huge amounts of electron
scattering leading to large amounts of vibration
in the material, on scales from the molecular
level up -- thus a glowing filament produces light
-- and lots of infrared light with wave lenghts up
to 50um or so. This is called "black-body"
emission and was the only way to make artificial
light for a long time. (The sun is also ab
lack-body emitter -- but at a temperature of
5700K). More recently,chemical and material
emitters (i.e. florescent and LED) have been
developed that are much more efficient in that the
ratio of light to heat is far better than is
possible in a metal based filament. (About90-98%
of the filaments energy is emitted in the
infrared). For further information on
Black-Body radiation and light wavelength
antennas, there are wikipedia articles. LED
lighting is a specialty of UCSB research and you
can find several articles on-line from the
lighting institute. Piezo resistivity has several
applications (the spark in gas lighters is
produced by a crystal that is thumped to build a
charge), and there are science experiment kits
sold to experiment with it. Nice questions! Click Here to return to the search form.
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