to light a bulb

to experimentally show that an incandescent light bulb does not obey Ohm's Law
to determine the temperature of the bulb filament

Equipment

Multimeter
Light bulb and holder
4 1.5-V batteries and battery holder(s)
Clip wires

Prelab

1. Successfully complete the Multimeter Tutorial.

2. Read the introduction to this lab.
3. Review section 21.2 of the text.
4. Watch this video to see what happens when a lit bulb is shot with a BB. (Don't try this
with your bulbs at home!) When exposed to oxygen, the filament bursts into flame.

Introduction

The Definition of Resistance

The definition of electrical resistance is R = -Vr/I,

where Vr is the potential difference across the
resistor when conventional current I passes through
the resistor. Consider the simple circuit with a battery
and resistor shown to the right. Conventional current
leaves the battery from the positive terminal and
passes through the resistor from left to right. Point a
has higher potential than point b, so the difference of
potential across the resistor is Vr = Vb - Va < 0. It's conventional practice when measuring
voltage with a meter to place the positive probe at the higher potential side. If we call V the
voltage measured by a meter in this way, then V = Va - Vb > 0. Therefore, V = -Vr > 0. With this
definition of voltage V as measured by a meter, the definition of resistance is R = V/I. As you can
see, there's potential (no pun intended) to get confused by the meanings of V and -Vr, besides
the fact that V also represents the unit of the volt. We summarize these results in the table below.

Used in a
Symbol Description Notes
formula
 potential difference across a
Vr R = -Vr/I
resistor These are alternative ways to
voltage as measured by a meter express the definition of
V with the positive probe touched to R = V/I resistance.
the higher potential side
In typed text, the symbol for the
V unit of volt V = 12 V variable V is italicized and the
symbol for the unit V is not.

Resistance of a Wire

The above is a treatment of the subject of electrical resistance in general. As a definition, R = -

Vr/I applies to any electrical resistor. In the specific case of a wire, the resistance can be
determined from physical characteristics of the wire: length, cross-sectional area, type of
material. The resistance of a wire is given by R = L/A, whereis the resistivity of the material, L
is the length of the wire, and A is the cross-sectional area of the wire. A fact mentioned only
briefly in the text is that the resistivity is temperature dependent. The resistivity at temperature T
is given by= o[1 + (T - To)], whereo is the resistivity at some reference temperature
(typically 20 C), andis the temperature coefficient of resistivity of the material and is
relatively constant. The units ofare C-1. For a wire of given length and cross-sectional area,
the resistance will increase with temperature ifis positive. This fact is exploited in this
experiment in order to determine the temperature of an incandescent bulb filament.

To Obey Ohm's Law or Not

In order to determine whether a circuit element obeys Ohm's Law, one measures the current in
the element as a function of the potential difference across the element. If a graph of current vs.
potential difference is linear, then the circuit element obeys Ohm's Law. Here is the statement of
Ohm's Law that you should remember:

A circuit element obeys Ohm's Law when the current in the element is proportional
to the potential difference across the element. A graph of current vs. potential
difference will be linear.

In symbolic form, Ohm's Law is I = KVr, where K represents a constant. From the
definition of resistance, we can see that the constant must be K = -1/R.

In order to determine in an experiment if a particular resistor obeys Ohm's Law, you would
connect the resistor in a simple circuit to different numbers of batteries. For each number of
batteries, you would measure the current in the circuit and the potential difference across the
resistor. If you use the conventional method of placing the positive probe of the meter on the
higher potential side of the resistor, then you would be measuring voltage, V. The voltage would
be the independent variable and would be plotted on the horizontal axis in a graph of I vs. V. If
the graph were linear, one would expect the slope of the linear fit to be 1/R. (Why wouldn't you
expect the slope to be -1/R?)

You've already seen an experiment to determine if a hot dog obeys Ohm's Law. In that case, the
answer was a definite no. Many types of circuit elements do not obey Ohm's Law. That makes
one wonder why it's called a law. Ohm's Rule might be a better name.

Power Dissipation in Resistors and Incandescent Bulbs

The power provided by a battery is Pb = I|Vb|, where Vb is

the potential difference across the battery terminals, and I is
the current in the circuit. The power dissipated in a resistor
is Pr = IR. An alternative formula is Pr = (Vr)/R, where
Vr is the potential difference across the resistor. (See Guide
21-1.) The same symbol I is used in both cases, because the
current is the same in the battery and the resistor. In a given
amount of time, t, the energy provided by the battery is Ub
= Pbt, and the energy converted by the resistor to heat is Ur
= Prt. If we assume that the wires have negligible resistance and therefore negligible power
dissipation, then for energy to be conserved, Ub - Ur = 0. Since the time interval is the same, Pb =
Pr also.

An incandescent bulb is a resistor. The tungsten filament of the bulb is designed to get so hot that
it gives off light when current passes through it. See the side-by-side photos to the right showing
the filmament with current off and on. Due to the fact that the resistance of the filament is
temperature-dependent, incandescent light bulbs do not obey Ohm's Law.

Incandescent light bulbs convert electrical energy to two other forms: thermal energy and radiant
energy (light). Taking light to be the useful energy output of the bulb, the efficiency of an
incandescent bulb is the ratio of radiant energy output to electrical energy input. For typical
incandescent bulbs, this is very low, only a few percent. This low efficiency is a primary reason
for the switch to fluorescent bulbs, which have efficiencies as much as 4 times greater.

Part A. Lighting the bulb

1. The diagram to the right shows a bulb connected to a

battery. The bulb is represented by a circle with a
sawtooth line inside. This doesn't help you when you
actually need to connect wires to a bare bulb to make
it light. For this part, use a fresh battery, the bulb, a
battery holder, and alligator leads. Do not use the
light bulb holder, as that will defeat the purpose of
this exercise. You may need another person to help
you hold some of the parts. The goal is to light the
 bulb. This amounts to figuring out where on the bulb
the electrical contacts are. Simply touch the alligator
clips to those contacts wherever you think they are. If
the bulb doesn't light but you feel the battery getting
warm, you've created what's called a short circuit.
That means you're connecting the battery to the same
point on the bulb. This effectively bypasses the bulb
and would quickly run down the battery if you left it
connected that way. Once you're successful in
lighting the bulb, sketch a large diagram showing the
bulb and the two points on the bulb that you touched
with the alligator clips. (If no matter what you do,
you can't get the bulb to light, your battery may be
too weak. In that case, try using two batteries in
series.)

2. Having determined how to light a bulb, do so again,

but reverse the positions of the alligator clips where
they touch the bulb. The point is to make the current
flow the opposite direction. Do you see a difference
from the results of step 1? Did you expect to?

Maybe you thought the above exercises were a bit too simple
for high-school students. However, studies show that many
college physics students don't know how to light a bulb when
it's not in a socket.

Screw the light bulb into its holder now. There are two clip
contacts on the holder. Connect an alligator clip to each one.
Touch the other ends of the alligator clips to the ends of a
battery. If your battery is fresh, the bulb should light,
although it will be weak. If the bulb doesn't light, make sure
it's screwed completely into the holder. From now on you'll
leave the bulb in its holder.
3. At this point, you should have your bulb in its holder
connected to a single battery. Add a second battery in
series with the first as shown to the right. Repeat with
3 batteries. Describe what you observed as you added
batteries. What you're doing when you change the
number of batteries is changing the amount of power
dissipated by the bulb. Explain your observations
using circuit concepts and relationships. The purpose
of this question is to give you practice in using
standard physics vocabulary such as potential
 difference, current, resistance, power and energy.
When you talk about potential difference, say
potential difference across the bulb. Similarly, you
would speak of current in the bulb. The goal is to
explain clearly without making nonsensical or
ambiguous statements about electrical circuits. Don't
rely on equations to make your argument for
you. Give your argument in paragraph form.

Part B. Determining whether the bulb obeys Ohm's Law

Before making resistance, voltage, and current measurements, review the multimeter tutorial for
how to connect the probes to the meter and to the circuit.

4. First, you'll measure what we call the room-temperature resistance of your light bulb, that
is, the resistance when the bulb isn't lit. Ideally, you need to know the resistance of your
bulb when no current is passing through it. In this case, the bulb will be at room
temperature, which is typically 20 - 25 C. However, when you connect your meter to the
bulb to measure the resistance, the meter passes a small current through the [Link] will
heat the filament slightly and change its resistance. In order to minimize this effect, don't
leave the meter connected for a long period of time while you measure the resistance. Just
hold the leads in place long enough to get a stable reading. Record the reading as Ro.

5. Measure the voltage across the bulb for 1, 2, 3, and 4 batteries. (Will the voltage be
positive or negative? If you don't know the answer, review the Introduction.) Record your
results in a table like the following.

Room temperature resistance, Ro = _________ ohm

Voltage V across bulb Current I in bulb
No. of batteries
(V) (A)
1
2
3
4

6. Now measure the current the circuit for the same 4 combinations of batteries and record
in the table. Remember to break the circuit and change the position of the red probe for
measuring current.
7. Plot a graph of I vs. V in Logger Pro. Set both of the scales to start from the origin.
(Which variable will go on the horizontal axis?) You won't turn in this LP file. Instead,
include the following in your report: A half-page size, hand-drawn graph of I vs. V for the
 bulb. You don't have to show grid lines, but do draw the axes with a straightedge, number
the scales, and place the 4 data points in approximately correct locations. The origin must
show on your graph, as this is important to the interpretation in the next item.
8. We know that the current should be 0 when the voltage is 0. If the origin were in fact a
data point, describe the overall trend of the data. Which way would the best-fit line
passing through the origin and the data curve? How would the slope change with
increasing potential difference? From this examination, describe how the resistance of the
bulb changes with V and explain how you know this.

Part C. Calculating the temperature of the filament

9. Using relationships from the introduction as starting points, show that for a wire of a
given length and cross section, the wire's resistance is given by: R = Ro[1 + (T - To)].
10. Look up the value of the temperature coefficient of resistivity for tungsten.
11. Calculate the highest temperature that the bulb filament reached. Start with a formula,
solve for T, and show your substitutions. Round to appropriate significant figures.

Conclusion

Summarize what you did and what you learned in this lab.

Submitting your work

Scan and upload your report to BrainHoney.

Ohm's Law is a simple and powerful mathematical tool for helping us analyze electric circuits,
but it has limitations, and we must understand these limitations in order to properly apply it to
real circuits. For most conductors, resistance is a rather stable property, largely unaffected by
voltage or current. For this reason we can regard the resistance of many circuit components as a
constant, with voltage and current being directly related to each other.

For instance, our previous circuit example with the 3 lamp, we calculated current through the
circuit by dividing voltage by resistance (I=E/R). With an 18 volt battery, our circuit current was
6 amps. Doubling the battery voltage to 36 volts resulted in a doubled current of 12 amps. All of
this makes sense, of course, so long as the lamp continues to provide exactly the same amount of
friction (resistance) to the flow of electrons through it: 3 .
However, reality is not always this simple. One of the phenomena explored in a later chapter is
that of conductor resistance changing with temperature. In an incandescent lamp (the kind
employing the principle of electric current heating a thin filament of wire to the point that it
glows white-hot), the resistance of the filament wire will increase dramatically as it warms from
room temperature to operating temperature. If we were to increase the supply voltage in a real
lamp circuit, the resulting increase in current would cause the filament to increase temperature,
which would in turn increase its resistance, thus preventing further increases in current without
further increases in battery voltage. Consequently, voltage and current do not follow the simple
equation "I=E/R" (with R assumed to be equal to 3 ) because an incandescent lamp's filament
resistance does not remain stable for different currents.

The phenomenon of resistance changing with variations in temperature is one shared by almost
all metals, of which most wires are made. For most applications, these changes in resistance are
small enough to be ignored. In the application of metal lamp filaments, the change happens to be
quite large.

This is just one example of "nonlinearity" in electric circuits. It is by no means the only example.
A "linear" function in mathematics is one that tracks a straight line when plotted on a graph. The
simplified version of the lamp circuit with a constant filament resistance of 3 generates a plot
like this:
The straight-line plot of current over voltage indicates that resistance is a stable, unchanging
value for a wide range of circuit voltages and currents. In an "ideal" situation, this is the case.
Resistors, which are manufactured to provide a definite, stable value of resistance, behave very
much like the plot of values seen above. A mathematician would call their behavior "linear."

A more realistic analysis of a lamp circuit, however, over several different values of battery
voltage would generate a plot of this shape:

The plot is no longer a straight line. It rises sharply on the left, as voltage increases from zero to
a low level. As it progresses to the right we see the line flattening out, the circuit requiring
greater and greater increases in voltage to achieve equal increases in current.

If we try to apply Ohm's Law to find the resistance of this lamp circuit with the voltage and
current values plotted above, we arrive at several different values. We could say that the
resistance here is nonlinear, increasing with increasing current and voltage. The nonlinearity is
caused by the effects of high temperature on the metal wire of the lamp filament.

Now, real batteries are constructed from materials which possess non-zero
resistivities. It follows that real batteries are not just pure voltage sources. They also
possess internal resistances. Incidentally, a pure voltage source is usually referred to
as an emf (which stands for electromotive force). Of course, emf is measured in units
of volts. A battery can be modeled as an emf connected in series with a resistor ,
which represents its internal resistance. Suppose that such a battery is used to drive a
current through an external load resistor , as shown in Fig. 17. Note that in circuit
diagrams an emf is represented as two closely spaced parallel lines of unequal
length. The electric potential of the longer line is greater than that of the shorter one

by volts. A resistor is represented as a zig-zag line.

Figure 17: A battery of emf and internal resistance connected to a load resistor of
resistance .

Consider the battery in the figure. The voltage of the battery is defined as the
difference in electric potential between its positive and negative terminals: i.e., the
points and , respectively. As we move from to , the electric potential

increases by volts as we cross the emf, but then decreases by volts as we

cross the internal resistor. The voltage drop across the resistor follows from Ohm's
law, which implies that the drop in voltage across a resistor , carrying a current ,
is in the direction in which the current flows. Thus, the voltage of the battery
is related to its emf and internal resistance via
 (133)

Now, we usually think of the emf of a battery as being essentially constant (since it
only depends on the chemical reaction going on inside the battery, which converts
chemical energy into electrical energy), so we must conclude that the voltage of a
battery actually decreases as the current drawn from it increases. In fact, the voltage
only equals the emf when the current is negligibly small. The current draw from the
battery cannot normally exceed the critical value
(134)

since for the voltage becomes negative (which can only happen if the load
resistor is also negative: this is essentially impossible). It follows that if we short-
circuit a battery, by connecting its positive and negative terminals together using a
conducting wire of negligible resistance, the current drawn from the battery is limited
by its internal resistance. In fact, in this case, the current is equal to the maximum

possible current .

A real battery is usually characterized in terms of its emf (i.e., its voltage at zero

current), and the maximum current which it can supply. For instance, a standard
dry cell (i.e., the sort of battery used to power calculators and torches) is usually rated
at and (say) . Thus, nothing really catastrophic is going to happen if we
short-circuit a dry cell. We will run the battery down in a comparatively short space of
time, but no dangerously large current is going to flow. On the other hand, a car
battery is usually rated at and something like (this is the sort of current
needed to operate a starter motor). It is clear that a car battery must have a much lower
internal resistance than a dry cell. It follows that if we were foolish enough to short-
circuit a car battery the result would be fairly catastrophic (imagine all of the energy
needed to turn over the engine of a car going into a thin wire connecting the battery
terminals together).