Why is a compact fluorescent lamp more efficient that an incandescent light bulb?
Fluorescent lamps are more energy-efficient than regular bulbs because of the different way they produce light. Incandescent bulbs create light by heating a filament inside the bulb; the heat makes the filament white-hot, producing the light that you see. This is not a very efficient way of producing light. Only 10% of the energy is used for light, while 90% of the energy used to create the heat that lights an incandescent bulb is wasted. A fluorescent lamp, on the other hand, contains a gas that produces invisible ultraviolet light (UV) when the gas is excited by electricity. Because fluorescent lamps don’t use heat to create light, they are far more energy-efficient than regular incandescent light bulbs.
