Re: Would this work? and other light thinking

["S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>]

Hopkins, Samuel asked if an automobile headlight would work for
aquarium lighting.


Of course, but it wouldn't work very well.  Auto headlights are
incandescent lamps -- very inefficient.  Although the reflector of a
headlight works well to focus the light downward (generally parabolic
reflectors or variations thereof), they have a lot of "fluting" in the
lens to direct the light to different parts of the road.  That might or
might not be the pattern you want on your tank.

But the biggest drawback is the inefficiency of incandescent lamps,
(even those with halogen bulbs); roughly 5% of the input energy
converted to usable light, the rest is given off as heat.  Incandescent
lamps are very efficient (which is not the same as effective) heaters
but very inefficient lights sources.

So I guess my question would be, "Why go to all the trouble to build a
special hood and power source for such an inefficient lamp?"

Scott H.

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