WAVE_PARTICLE said:
Not sure if this is true or not, but I've been told that current incandescent light bulbs are engineered to fail.....that all it takes is a slightly thicker filament to make the lightbulb last forever (or at least orders of magnitude longer). Myth? :shrug: dunno.....
WP
Not a myth, more a half- truth. There are bulbs, that last a very long time, for applications where a failure would be critical (traffic lights), or in places where they are really hard to replace.
These bulbs are very inefficient.
So the bulb engineers have to decide whether the customer has to spend his money on wasted electricity or on replacing bulbs.
Current lightbulbs are designed in a way that the total costs of illumination including electricity and replacement bulbs are the lowest possible.
If a bulb lasted longer, one would spend more money on electricity than one would save because of longer replacement intervals.
Cheers,
Julez