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Driving downtown one rainy Sunday, I passed around the back of Sacramento's historic Memorial Auditorium. I spotted three big boxes of lightbulbs at the top of the dumpster and pulled over to take a look. There were 72 bulbs. They were large bulbs: 300-watts, with a magnum base. I half-expected the bulbs to be working, because rarely do two bulbs burn out at the same time, but they had all expired. I loaded the boxes into my trunk. |
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James at work told me these bulbs looked like PS35s. In lightbulb terms, that is for "Pear Shaped" size 35 (measured in 8ths of an inch). |
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 When I was a kid, my father showed my brother and I how to crush the base of a lightbulb and use the glass bulb like a chemistry-set flask. I decided I could break open the bulbs and create some kind of art-project out of them. |
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The first step was to pry off the metal contact at the very bottom of the base. I did that with wire-cutters. Next I used an ice pick to stab down the center of the bulb. This broke the sealing glass, and released the vacuum. I could usually hear it hiss for a second as air rushed into the bulb. |
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 With a break in the base, I pried away the dark glass at the bottom and slid a metal rod into the bulb. By carefully pulling the filament armature to one side, it would break off without shattering the bulb, leaving a little pile of glass and wire inside. |
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 I did this about 50 times. I used the empty bulbs to fashion an ultra-fragile chandelier that recalls cell division and the 1970s. If all the bulbs were operating, it would use 15,000 watts. |
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 A few of the dissected lightbulbs had the filaments intact, so we decided to see how long one could incandesce out of a vacuum...sort of like Edison's experiments in reverse. The filament is a tight coil of a tungsten alloy, strong but brittle. I hooked up a stripped electrical cord to the ends of the filament and got the camera ready. Mike moved back, commenting that the wire is so bright because it is white-hot. This prompted Brooke and I to hunt around the lab for our tinted safety goggles. |
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With everything in place, we plugged it into the wall. It was awesome! It seemed supernaturally bright, but I suppose it was no brighter than a regular 300-watt bulb.
Please continue reading page 2. |
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