Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

just need help on how to actually conduct an experiment with energy efficient light bulbs.

my main point i'm trying to show with my experiment is that CFL's are cheaper, but i need a way to show that.

any help is greatly appreciated!

Hi,

I moved this topic to the physical sciences forum because I think you'll get more help here. Good luck!

This sounds like an interesting idea. If you need to know anything about CFL's here's a government website about them
http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=cfls.pr_cfls

Also you're project sounds similar to one on Science Buddies .

http://www.sciencebuddies.com/science-f ... Q&from=TSW

However the project isn't a perfect match to what you are asking. What you could do is create two circuits, one with a conventional light bulb and another with a CFL. Both circuits should have a battery power source with the same charge. You could then measure how much power has been drawn from the battery every hour of operation. From that you could determine which is more effect and by how much. You could then turn that into numeric savings by looking at the cost of power provided by your local utility and the costs of blubs.

Hope this helps

Another experiment that doesn't take instruments would be to test the bulbs (incandescent and CFL) against one another to determine what folks find suitable for reading, for example. If a 60 watt incandescent is suitable for one person, then try different sizes of CFL on the same lamp. Is that person happy with a 7 watt CFL? Let's say they are equivalent. Then the cost of operation can be calculated from knowledge of the bulb specifications. That is: the 7Watt CFL uses 7 watt-hours per hour of operation and the 60 watt incandescent uses 60 watt-hours per hour of operation. Your electric bill should have the cost per kilowatt-hr (1000 watt-hours) stated, so it's a simple arithmetic problem. The carton for both kinds of bulbs should list their expected life in hours, so you could also calculate the cost per hour of using a bulb.

Remember that you will have to try out the test on a number of people to get good statistics.