I've Heard of Cornhole, the Beanbag Tossing Game, But Corn Bulbs? LEDs Have Changed Lighting Forever.

August 28, 2021

#438

Gentle reader,

In 1982, I went to work for the Washington, D.C. subway company whose acronym is WMATA, short for Washington Metro Area Transit Authority. metro for short. They do not capitalize the m.

During propulsion and braking class, I asked the instructor how LEDs worked. "F.M." "Frequency modulation?" "No, f___ing magic, I don't know how they work." OK, then.

For the purpose of this article, I will not explain it, it's pretty cool, but they went largely unchanged for almost 100 years before engineers started experimenting with making their illuminations brighter.

You are no doubt familiar with the curly-cue compact florescent light "bulbs" which were the first answer to the U.S. Government's order to reduce the wasted energy conventional Tungsten light bulbs produced. Remember the toy Easy Bake Oven? It used a 100 watt light bulb which gets hot enough to actually cook the little cakes. Between 2.5% and 5% of the electricity is converted to light, the rest is wasted as heat.

The main problem, and there were many, with CFL bulbs, and all florescent lighting, is that they need a small amount of the poisonous liquid metal called Mercury to work. Thus, used up bulbs and tubes are hazardous materials and cannot legally be thrown out.

Lighting engineers figured out how to get LEDs to produce more light, but they then also produced heat. Not nearly as much as traditional bulbs, though. So, the first LED bulbs had expensive and somewhat heavy aluminum finned heat sinks to dissipate the heat. 

As time went by, they eliminated that problem in several ways. Also, LEDs do not emit light in all directions like regular and CFL bulbs do. Again, they overcame that problem too.

Some, mostly Asian, lighting engineers came up with a unique way to get their LED bulbs emitting 360 degrees. See below:

Their answer was using many bright LEDs in rows the full circumference of the body with some on the end as well. And they work.

My first dipping of a toe into the corn bulb waters was buying the four on the left. They were found on Amazon, marketed as "100 watt equivalent". When they got here, first, they are small, and second, they do not emit nearly that much light, singly, anyway.

So, I made this setup using four ceramic covered lightbulb sockets I had saved from a removed bathroom fixture. I mounted them on the circular flat piece of steel shown.

I have been trained in working with electricity, so know what I am doing. Do not, EVER, try and work on things that use electricity. It can and will KILL you!

The ceramic insulating covers over the metal lightbulb sockets are there because the bulbs get hot, especially if there are multiple ones.

So, why did I want a corn bulb? I had found a photography light stand with an attached collapsible square reflective umbrella at a thrift store.

This is not it, exactly, the photo I did find would not open for this purpose. But you will see it below.

Traditionally, they used large and hot tungsten lightbulbs. However the cord on this setup is very thin, and thus would overheat and possibly catch fire using anything but LED bulbs. 

When I tried a good LED bulb, like the one on the left (this is an excellent photo of an early LED bulb with finned aluminum heatsink, which I just found online) you see that only the front hemisphere of the bulb is lit. Thus no light comes from the rear portion of the bulb to bounce off the reflective surface of the light umbrella.

Very clever photographic editing here, I wish I had that kind of talent. LED on the left, conventional tungsten bulb in the middle and a typical CFL bulb on the right. All with no visible means of support or electricity.

Using this photo again, the smallest corn bulb is supposed to emit the equivalent of what a traditional tungsten 100 watt bulb would put out. The next one is "Rated" at 200 watts and the one on the right, 300 watts. Prior to buying the big ones, I made the fixture and just holding it lit up inside the umbrella, it still did not produce enough light. SO, I bought first the 200 then the 300.

Here is the 200 watt equivalent corn bulb mounted inside the reflective umbrella.

And here it is lit up. Nice, white light. Each of these big corn bulbs came from different factories.

And above and below is the 300 watt equivalent bulb, not it has some blueness to it's light.

Since, as mentioned, I had no way to mount the "400 watt" cluster of corn bulbs inside the umbrella, here they are, below, lit up. Also, a nice white light is emitted.

Now, the way lights "Color" is rated is based upon: "Black Body" Kelvin degrees of light measurement. Here is a link, coincidentally from my alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University, to explain:

Electromagnetic Spectrum; Kelvin Scale; Speed of Light; Additive Color Theory

Basically, a theoretical "Black Box" or object, heated up until glowing, with the resultant colors emitted at each increase in heating up into thousands of degrees Kelvin is how light sources are rated. "Warm" bulbs are only a between one and two thousand degrees K, while "Daylight" bulb are between 5000 and 6000 K.

I decided the 300 watt equivalent corn bulb would do the trick to provide me enough light for my needs. So, what to do with the others?

This house has two bathrooms, one upstairs, the other downstairs. But, it had a little passageway from the master bedroom to the upstairs bathroom. I removed what was there and made it a storage alcove. The four light sockets came from an identical fixture as this one in said bathrooms. The shot above, with the lights off and flash used. Note the four traditional bulbs we bought by mistake thinking that they were inexpensive LED bulbs. Tsk, tsk.

These two photos do not due these small corn bulbs justice. The bathroom is REALLY bright now!

For the remaining 200 watt corn bulb, I removed the LED bulb which was there and put it into the three-bulb overhead fixture I had installed in this very room, the one pointing towards where I am sitting now.

Every Sunday afternoon, at five, my mother and all four of my siblings get onto an hour long Zoom call. It is wonderful, Mom is 88, and we are spread about the country so it is a great chance to get to know each other better and catch up. We have never run out of things to talk about and I highly recommend doing so with your loved ones if you have the capability. 

I believe that 200 watt equivalent corn bulb will light me up "right well" as we here in the South sometimes say.

For your edification and education, here are a number of different types of corn bulbs I found doing research for this article:

Each are their engineers idea of what a corn bulb should look like. The one that folds open is pretty clever. And the ones which have little fans inside are cool, too. Get it? They are cooled.

I hope you enjoyed reading my humble blog. I enjoy writing and your kind words or comments below or on Facebook are always wonderful to read.

Scott

August 28, 2021

#438