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Electroluminescence |
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What is electroluminescence? |
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Electroluminescence is light created by a gas in the path of an electrical discharge. It is a type of chemiluminescence. Remember back to the days when you had chemistry class, and how you had to examine the light spectrums of different elements. Well, that was electroluminescence in work. In my class, our teacher had many different tubes containing the gases of different elements. When hooked up to a high voltage source, the tubes glowed bright colors. As the electricity passed through the atoms of the element, the electrons went from there ground state the excited state. As they dropped back down to the ground state, the light that we saw was given off. |
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Uses and Occurrences: |
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You might be thinking that electroluminescence has no use. This is not the case. This type of luminescence is what makes halogen lights work. It is the same as the tubes in chemistry class, except the lights are filled with a gas that glows a bright white. Of course there are other practical uses of electroluminescence. For example, the materials used in the backlighting of control panels all are being subjected to high energy imputs (see picture). |
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Electroluminescence occurs in nature too. When lightning occurs, it isn�t the electricity that you see. It is the light given off by the excited atoms in the air, as the electricity passes through them. |
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