Year In Pictures: 2010/10/21 - The mystery bulb is a mystery

[plonq]

It came with the house, hung exactly as you see it here. It was obviously hung with a purpose, because it was first wired into place, then wrapped with several windings of tape to ensure that it would not move. There are no fixtures in the house that take a bulb this size. Behind it is a vintage 1978 map of Manitoba.

Comments

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

Fluorescent bulbs will sometimes glow on their own, in the presence of strong electromagnetic radiation fields. Are you near high voltage power lines or a microwave transmitter?

[aerofox.livejournal.com]

A friend of mine years ago would turn on his powerful ham radio transmitter then walk around the yard outside with a fluorescent bulb. It lit up by all the RF energy and scared the neighbors!

Witchcraft I say! He is of the DEVIL! He can make lightbulbs glow in his bare hands!!!!

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I'll do you one better. One ham I knew in the 70s had a bulb, and a selenium photoresistor glued to it. He wrapped the entire thing in black tape and walked a circle around his antenna, making notes about the resistance at that point. Then with a piece of angular graph paper, he mapped out his field pattern and then tweaked his antennas.

[aerofox.livejournal.com]

Damn, excellent idea! Though, simple Field Strength meters would do the same thing and even then were inexpensive, unless there was a difference in linearity using the bulb/photocell?

nowadays, you could plug all the resistance measurements into an Excel speadsheet and have it do all calculations and graphing! ^_^