There are few things that I use everyday (and night), but have no idea how to make, more than lightbulbs. Luckily, Instructables member Mr. Fishers3 has put together a terrific homemade lightbulb tutorial to help us create and appreciate these everyday electrical wonders.
This lightbulb is made entirely out of simple, mostly household materials requiring very little in special equipment. The basic construction includes a glass jar filled with CO2 and a graphite filament(Pencil Lead). This makes it a carbon filament bulb analogous to those made by Edison before tungsten became the norm.
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Hey Andrew… This is nothing new for me… I’ve been making “Reinventing Edison: Build your own Light Bulb” a STEM Science kit since 2004. (Maker Shed carries it sometimes) Reinventing Edison was picked by Make as one of the top science kits in the 2012 Ultimate Kit Guide. http://youtu.be/FlUqTsBZUzI I’ve been showing it off at Maker Faire events this year including the D.C. Mini Maker Faire and last weekend’s Kingsport Mini Maker Faire. Hope to also have it at World Maker Faire and the Atlanta Maker Faire later this year.
The kit includes materials that work (including Carbon Pencil Lead and Tungsten Wire) and also materials that don’t work as well. Experimenters can vary the length, pick different diameters, or add even more materials of their own. Its great for profiling resistance of materials via voltage/current measurements and I’ve had some high school students place in the Intel Science Faire with it by building a data table and empirically proving Ohm’s Law. My kit has a hand vacuum pump for the removal of most of the air (instead of using carbon dioxide to displace the air).
I make all the Reinventing Science kits out of my home in Burlington NC. I use a ShopBot desktop to cut out some of the parts (graduated up from manual jigs and fixtures with a drill press and chop saw)