Can You Touch Halogen Bulbs? The Science Behind It
Many people wonder why their halogen bulbs do not last as long as they are supposed to. Well, early failure of halogen bulbs is often caused by surface contamination.
The most likely source of surface contamination is when you touch the glass portion of a halogen bulb with your bare skin. That is what we are going to investigate in this article.
Why does merely touching a halogen bulb with your skin ruin it? Is this the worst that could happen?
The Science
Touching the glass portion of a halogen bulb with your bare skin (whether your skin is clean or not) leaves skin oils on the bulb.
Halogen bulbs are sensitive to skin oils. This contamination is undesirable because when the bulb is turned on, the oil heats up, creating a hot spot. This hot spot can lead to cracks forming or bubbles, allowing the halogen gas to leak out of the bulb. This is what leads to early failure.
That is the best case scenario. The worst-case scenario is that the bulb actually explodes, sending hot shards of glass in every direction. This is, of course, very dangerous. You see, the traces of oil you leave on the glass cause the bulb to heat up unevenly.
Halogen bulbs are made of temperature-resistant quartz glass rather than common glass. This is in contrast to the older type of bulbs – the incandescent bulbs. Due to using this temperature-resistant quartz glass, halogen bulbs can attain much higher temperatures than incandescent bulbs.
At these high temperatures, the trace of oil from your skin left when you touched the bulb become significant. The oily parts become extremely hot – hotter than other parts of the bulbs surface, and this creates an imbalance, temperature differences across the bulb surface.
How to Change a Halogen Bulb
From what we have revealed so far, it is clear that you should never touch a halogen bulb with your skin, especially when it is new. If you want your bulb to have a long life, don’t do it.
In that case, how should you handle your halogen bulbs when you want to change them, if you are not allowed to touch them with your bare hands?
The key word is “bare hands” – or rather, skin. Halogen bulbs are sensitive to the oils from your skin, which you leave on the surfaces you touch, especially glass surfaces.
Therefore, whenever you are changing a halogen bulb, ensure you wear rubber gloves. If gloves are not available, use clean paper.
Note also, that you should wait for the bulb to cool down before touching it. As we noted, halogen bulbs operate at really high temperatures.
How to Clean a Halogen Bulb after Touching It
Accidents happen and you might end up touching your halogen bulb with your bare hand, in spite of knowing you shouldn’t. Someone else, your child for instance, could touch it. What do you do when this happens?
Well, just touching is not bad. The problem is when the bulb is turned on after you have touched it. Therefore, so long as the light hasn’t been turned on, everything is still okay and you can fix the situation.
You clean the bulb with rubbing alcohol. Naturally, you should put on rubber gloves when you are cleaning the bulb to ensure you don’t leave more oil prints on the glass.
Procedure:
Final Verdict
Halogen bulbs are not like other bulbs. They are sensitive to direct touch from our bare skins, The high temperatures these bulbs reach when turned on cause the oil prints we leave on the glass surface to become really hot and create an imbalance which causes a shorter bulb life. It might even cause an explosion.
As we have seen, to prevent that from happening, always wear rubber gloves or use clean paper when handling the bulb, for instance to change it. Do not touch it directly. If you do touch it, clean with alcohol.
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