You might have a portion of the second to take a great photo, but what if it is very dark to see? A xenon flash lamp is the best solution since it’s filled with xenon gas. Press your camera button, wait a few seconds for the flash to activate, hit your shutter button to snap the photo, and suddenly you will get the light you need. You will also find xenon flash lamps powering film projectors, ultra-bright headlamps, and lighthouses. What is a xenon flash lamp, and how does it work? Here is what you need to know.
How Does an Arc Flash Lamp Work?
While all lamps produce light, they don’t all work in a similar way. Incandescent lamps have light by passing electricity via a thin metal filament. The filament gets hot and burns brightly. On the other hand, the fluorescent lamps work differently, like the zap electricity via gas, to produce invisible ultraviolet light that gets transformed into light.
Similar to neon lamps, the xenon flash lamp is a type of arc lamp. Arc lamps are a tiny bolt of lightning occurring under extremely controlled conditions inside a glass tube with gas. At the end of the tube, there are metal contacts known as electrodes, connected to a very high voltage power source.
So, what produces the light? Once the power source is switched on, the gas atoms find themselves in an electrical force and split into tiny parts. This is known as ionization. The broken particles of atoms (negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions) then hurtle in opposite directions on the tube. The electrons rush to the positive electrode, and ions shift to the other side, creating an electric current. Then, the charged ions break down into neutral atoms and electrodes. This produces energy like a flashlight known as an arc that efficiently leaps the gap between electrodes, the same as a lightning bolt. This is like an electric discharge, and this is why these lamps are known as discharge lamps. Adequate light is released by the electrodes that become hot and burn brightly.
The color of the light produced will depend on the atomic structure of the gas utilized. In xenon flash lamps, it is whiter light that resembles the natural light.
Other Xenon Lamps
Other types of xenon lamps work like neon flash lamps and release a small amount of light continuously. Rather than passing a tremendous amount of electricity via the gas briefly to yield the sudden arc of light, they use smaller and steady voltage to release a continuous discharge of brighter light. This is how the lighthouse and movie projector lamps work.
