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From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers,sci.electronics
Subject: Re: fluorescent lights and my brain
Message-ID: <1144@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: 28 Apr 88 02:34:11 GMT
References: <530@scourge> <1182@ssc.UUCP> <1532@dataio.Data-IO.COM> <1143@neoucom.UUCP>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 20
Keywords: eyes head ache electricity
Summary: Did I goof in my last article?


In my last article I said that I believed that phase was irrelevent
with regards to fluorescent lighting.  Perhpas true with single or
split phase wiring.  If the tubes were fed from 240 or 480 volt
three phase circuit, with correct wiring, you could get 360 flashes
a second, not true?  Since the three phases are separated by T/3,
there would be a totoal of 6 peaks (3+ and 3-) per T, separated by
T/6.  In this case, T=1/60th sec, the fundamental period of the
power line frequency (in most, if not all of the USA, that is).

As I mentioned, we tried hooking tubes up to a 120 volt single phase
circuit, and it didn't seem to effect the signal that we picked up
on a photo diode positioned below the tubes.  We got the same shape
120 Hz waveform either way.  Since it was an impromptu experiment,
we did not have a solid state ballast handy for comparison.  They
don't trust us with the big toys, so we din't have the ability to
try a three phase set-up.

--Bill
  wtm@neoucom.UUCP