The Low Pressure Sodium Lamp
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- čas přidán 5. 12. 2011
- This yellow light was once widely used for street lighting but has lost popularity to the high-pressures sodium lamp. It was developed in 1920 at Westinghouse, and commercialized by Philips in 1932. The low-pressure sodium lamp is also known as an "LPS" lamp. It is still widely used in certain cities like Bogota, San Diego, and some European cities. Learn about how the lamp starts, warms up using argon and neon, and vaporizes the solid sodium.
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These were the most common street lamp bulbs in the UK from the mid 60s right through to the 80s when HP Sodium (SON) lamps became more popular. When I was a kid the night sky used to literally glow bright orange with the reflected light from urban areas.
To be fair SOX was more popular right up until LEDs as soon as you got off the main roads.
The netherlands used these until around the 21st century
These lamps are heavily used around observatories, the astronomers love them due to their specific light output as it can be easily filtered out of any images they get
"I looked at one for about three hours, and all I saw was green for about a day" Thanks for the laugh sir.
Having a different color for intersections is an excellent idea. It's easy for tired drivers or colorblind drivers to not notice the green light which resembles more white at a distance. Red lights can blend in with other read lights of commercial areas. So a car can blow through an intersection without realizing it had a light normally if all str lights are uniform in color.
Lol at the CRI of negative 44! Never knew that and that explains why you don't see this as being used much today. One niche use was at beaches and piers to not disturb sea life. Thanks again. One of my many passions.
Thank you for the safety disposal tips as well as the eye issues from looking directly at the lamp!
Eyes issues from looking at light sources are broadly universal, though seeing green for up to 12 hours after staring at a nearly straight yellow light source seems quite merciful compared to what staring directly at bright white light for that long would probably do.
(Used to help at my aunt's optometrist practice, and had to routinely reassure people that, no, they weren't blind, they just didn't blink when we told them they can blink while doing a peripheral vision test. They'd see moving black clouds, because they haven't been blinking out of fear of missing a light flash (which determines their width of vision) as if the test is incapable of ruling out one or two missed lights in very different locales as an outlier almost certainly caused by a blink. White light contains all colour light information, and your eyes very quickly get tired of processing all that noise, though you typically only notice if you're staring. There's actually a good video out there that demonstrates one of the side effects of staring at bright light- the video instructs you to look at the center, and counts down, then tells you to move your eyes, and you suddenly realize you're staring at a greyscale image... that you were just seeing *in colour.* Your cones get tired of being activated, and begin to stop sending colour signals, whereupon your visual processing center fills the information in, if you're staring, because it understands its view has not changed and there is no reason to expect any of the information has changed either. This leads you to 'see' colour where there actually isn't any, and, in the long term, will lead to excessive tiring of the cones to the point of seeing black clouds or experiencing brief tunnel vision as the receptors *really* start to get tired of the same old shit, easily fixed by looking at something else, though by this point you WILL see in 'weird colours'- it will depend on the color of the objects you're looking at and the actual composition of the white light you were looking at, but the colours will all appear wrong as the white light has tired out specific colour segments, which is why when the uploader was under LPS light for 3 hours, their yellow sensitivity was tired and beat to shit, so they saw green, likely because a lot of what their eyes were processing was blue, and the overloaded yellow sensitive cones kept sending 'yellow light' signals, causing the visual processing center to 'render' everything in green based on the data it was being given.)
Another reason to use sodium vapor lamps: As cities & suburbs grow closer to astro-observatories that used to be "out in the country", the reflected ambient light pollution makes observation more difficult. The ambient monochromatic light is much easier to filter out; big help to astronomers as a quarter-wave monochromatic filter is far less expensive.
Observatories also love SOX lights because the monochromatic light they produce is much easier to filter out of images unlike other lamp types.
The UK has a street lighting scheme which started a few years ago, and involves the renewal of old or inefficient lighting. SON is used on most main roads, high power halide at busy intersections, and capsule halide lamps or PLL in neighbourhoods. The old lighting is mostly SOX and SON.
Nice video! I'm a big fan of Low Pressure Sodium lighting, I actually have one in my room (SOX-E 26W) in a street light, I also have a video of it. I personally don't have much trouble going back to "color vision" after being under the light for a while, but I wouldn't stare into it for a longer time (it's not dangerous at all or so but it's just so bright!). It's a very fascinating light source to me, especially since we hardly have them at all in street lighting here in Germany.
Where did you buy it?
Thank you for that excellent and fascinating demonstration of LPS lighting. I recently set up a 18W SOX bulb for researchers that wanted to take photographs with no color information.
I bought an inexpensive ( $25 - Fulham WH2 ) ballast to drive the bulb and found the correct (B22) bayonet socket on the Internet for a couple bucks.
It was exciting to turn it on and watch the bulb warm up, beautiful too! It took more than ten minutes to achieve full brightness. Incredible for only 18 watts!
Did it work?? Does a 18W SOX bulb change how the eye sees color?
here in the Netherlands they are still in operation in some old fixtures, mostly around small connecting roads between highways.
I hope to keep seeing them for a long time. IMO the most efficiënt and environmental friendly lightsource.
I don't know what LEDs they use around Netherlands, but here once they replaced the LPS lamps with LEDs, I immediately noticed how much darker the streets became, especially noticeable when raining, almost feels like no street lighting at all then
These lamps were used in CRT and semiconductor facilities up until the development of suitable longer-lasting orange fluorescent lamps. They were used in lieu of regular broad-spectrum lighting to prevent inadvertent exposure of photosensitive materials.
The Sodium Lamps in Leicester United Kingdom, Are still in use. But now all the Street Lamps are being changed to L.E.D. Every night the sky gets a little darker.
M1 J23A-24 lost its LPS when the Smart Motorway came along. Now all LED.
The best & One of the oldest "Efficient" Street lamps of the lot..Sorry to see their starting to Fade off our roads (Being Replaced)..GEC & Phillips 35 watts Just seem to last forever
@Ale Bob Kind reminder: This whole "queer" thing started in America. Also European lamps are in fact more reliable than American products (according to measurements of average burning times). Further; White Americans are all related to European ancestors. Your stupid ignorance is just astonishing. Get some education.
This is so Damn Informative ... Love from India ❤️
Phillips stops in 2020 to make them , last purchase orders are in july 2019, an another sad moment to great bulbs , forever my favorites LPS
SOX is used on most roads here in the UK, but is slowly being replaced by SON and metal halide fixtures. But cool white metal halide is usually installed at road junctions here.
We've had high pressure sodium as the dominant street lighting source round here for several decades. before that it was a mixture of incandescent and mercury vapor. Now the HPS lamps are giving way to high intensity LED street lighting. In fact the vast majority of street lighting round here these days is primarily LED.
Big island Hawaii put new LPS fixtures in. AZ put lots in too.
Thanks!
Super!
Thank you so much for this video! If it weren't for all this information I never would've been able to win the school science fair! At the Exploratorium in San Francisco they have taken advantage of the light having such a bad color rendering by lighting a room by these lamps then filling it up with the most collegial things you can think of, including jelly beans! If anybody ever gets the opportunity to go there definitely check it out! I was very surprised at the fact that after staring at it they could only see green! (That actually sounds pretty fun!)
Colorful not collegial XD
The real fun comes when you live in an area surrounded by them. When I was little I used to love watching the old SOX lamps warm up and when they were at full brightness, I used to go outside with random objects to see how they looked under the glow of the lamps. Being that I was (and still am) an electronics nerd, SOX street lamps were a bit of an enigma to me. Too bad they've been replaced with ceramic metal halide now. I mean yeah, you get good colour rendering now but who the hell cares about that!? It's an outdoor light designed to be a basic, low glare source of light to help you see at night, not a beautification device made to simulate daylight!! Since I've started taking up working with gas discharge lamps as a bit of a side-hobby I think I might get an old Thorn Beta 5 or something and mess around with it. Got a 35w SOX lamp in the mail as we speak anyway so that'll give me something more interesting than the HQI/CDM halide lamps I've been working with.
TheSOXMania you are not the only one who loves low pressure sodium , been at work to make some cool projects
inside my garage to preserve the heritage of sox lamps and fixtures before it closes the philipps plant
@Dave Micolichek True. The higher CRI is good for telling colours apart however, we Brits have never had trouble with things such as recognising faces or seeing into car windows etc. It turns out while the CRI isn't good for seeing colour (duh), the light output is still good enough that you can make out faces and facial features and also be able to read text. Both of which would be more key as here in the UK we have license plates that are reflective in most light (especially SOX as it used to be a primary source in the late 70s until around 2012).
An example of how well SOX renders detail can be seen below with this picture of my cat. Lit only by a 35 watt low pressure sodium lamp.
www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=146231&fullsize=1
I was two month ago in Koblenz and that town had a lot of SOX streetlights on some major road around the town.
well idk why that is but i have found lps on a street across from my old house and because i was little at that time i wasnt into lights and idk if they had those lamps for all those years but it was an amazing discovery and i might take some pics of it and a dayburning one
Used around observatories because it is easy to filter out the narrow spectrum.
Wow, really! Thanks for that hint. That is a very rare thing to see, but yeah apparently there are few spots. =D
Koblenz is about 1 hour from where I live.
These are scientifically planted at Flagstaff, AZ. They are planted to preserve the night sky and for Lowell Observatory.
I've noticed the new LED lamps seem dimmer to the sodium bulbs. I know there whiter, but its not like your reading books with them. You just need them to get from A to B! To be honest I think I prefer the old sodium bulbs, as you do not get glare from them.
In South Northamptonshire UK they have gone for Gas Discharge bulbs I think, I know they are defiantly not LED, but are very white but quite dim and loads of glare.
Can you suggest a currently made magnetic ballast as well as an electronic one?
What is generally the initial start voltage to get these going?
I must stare at one now.
Driving through the West Rock tunnel as a toddler, I discovered firsthand what a low CRI looks like
What wattage is the bulb you were using? can you post a link?
How bright will the bulb have to be to light up a small room? I tried using a 35w bulb and it was barely bright enough to light itself
They have these on most old street lights in the UK but some are being replaced with LEDs
I will post soon some pictures on Lighting Gallery. Most of the SOX lamps are in AEG PLS lanterns but also an older AEG fixture and some of Philips.
Received my streetlight low pressure sodium yesterday ,it's a SRS 876 , 135 watts ,if i' m correct the date of production is 11/80 was made by philipps canada,need a ballast and a bulb ,the difuser is in good shape :)
+veil67 the ballast kit will cost me 225 $ and the bulb 65 $ , suppose to have my bulb next week and the ballast 2 weeks from today , will be fun to see the SRS work again :)
duuude, crazy
is rather orange than yellow, anyway was popular in "foggy" town like Milano in Northern Italy until late eighties because typical orange glow was believed penetrating fog better than white light . EEC standard changed this "believing" about orange light.
Very interesting video about the Low Pressure Sodium lamp, the LPS streetlights are being culled from the streets of Australia at a rapid rate which is a shame. I am very interested in what you said about the lamps being prone to catching fire should they be broken in the process of incorrect disposal. I have an LPS lamp sitting in an ex-streetlight under my house, the outer glass envelope has a hole (about the size of a quarter) in it at the tip of the lamp. Is this a dangerous thing? Regards.
Hello.
The source of low pressure sodium vapor bulbs (internal). When shining or lit, Is it less hot than the halogen lamp ???? The liquid metal sodium, when put in water. Why is it on fire ???
I agree with you. I prefer the mellow gold, contrast enhanced, appearance of SOX as well.
But then, unfortunately, there are those people who are like "WTF, I can't see which color the waste on the sidewalk is, we need good color rendering to light our roads!" Ridiculous. I mean, come on, I'm not saying use SOX everywhere but why not at least in areas with high traffic.
LPS is still the prevailing tech for UK streetlighting although HPS is creeping in at an alarming rate!
And 10 years from then now LED completely take over the UK
@@xsauce3858 Still plenty of SOX about near me. For now...
its because there may be something with the bulb or ballast. its because the arc is not even going through the sodium only the neon gas
thaz
They have these type of lights on most of the highways in California.
there actually were SOX street lights on freeways and city streets in the city of San Diego to help reduce light pollution to help astronomers observe the heavens at palomar observatory.
They still use many of these in the tunnels around Paris, although they are looking very poorly maintained.
Springfield, Oregon, has a large number of these. The only problem with them is that the color is nearly identical to an amber traffic signal, and are often confused.
Is Springfield near an observatory? These are sometimes used near observatories because of the narrow wavelengths of light which can be easily filtered.
At the municipal I used to work at, we would throw hundreds of these things in regular trash cans all the time.
"I once started at a low pressure sodium lamp for three hours." ...
Even a regular lamp will do that to your eyes, if you stare at it for three hours, bro.
Well done. But spoken text blocks written material beneath.
Interesting about the monochromatic affect on ones eyes. Unexpected.
Can't add other materials to make more white?
Thank you.
Got myself a good break ,friday i asked my boss if he would sell a Goldfinger II that is never been used,totally new ,it's still in his box , at the time it was worth around 269 $, he told me i could buy it for 125 $, it will be my second goldfinger ,not decide if i will use it ,depends how my SRS will light up my driveway , still waiting for my 135 watts ballast ,back order for a month already
For What is Of Orange Color?
Hi, I would like to buy a low pressure sodium bulb, however I’m not able to find any specific ballast for SOX lamps. Could you tell me how to search a proper one and what to take into consideration while looking for it? I found a lot of different ones and im not sure what are the differences between them
Try using a fluorescent ballast, I have heard that this method works.
sometimes called the goldfinger lamp
65bug519 i do agree i have 4 goldfingers II one i use in front of my garage all 55 watts , just ordered a bunch of sox lamps before philipps stops to make them in 2020
I have often seen these in developing rooms for photos, is this because of it being at the peak sensitivity of the human eye? (Replies are appreciated because I am planning on setting up my own developing room and don't want to screw my pictures up!)
Yes, and at the same time the minimum sensitivity of most photographic paper. It is still common for these lamps to have filters on them to filter out other wavelengths though.
I have to ask….. why did you stare at a lamp for three hours?
I looked at one for 3 hours
music?
sodium explodes when it makes contact with water, not throw sodium in water unless you want to see a cool explosion
Would be cool if it had some mercury in it, might improve the colour. And also an induction low pressure sodium lamp would be cool too.
There probably is mercury in them.
During the production process the discharge tube was evacuated using Mercury diffusion pumps before being back filled with the penning mixture. Its very likely trace amounts of mercury exist inside.
@0972q8 The mercury content isn't needed or welcome in a SOX lamp, but due to the manufacturing processes involved in their construction, its entirely possible that some have trace amounts of Mercury in them.
There is no mercury in LPS that iknow. But. HighPressure sodium does have mercury in them what you might see is the metallic sodium composites in the borosilicate arc tube😊😊😎
how this lamp has -44 cri ?! should not the lowest cri be 0 ?? could not find any reason on net
where can I get this lamp?
Ebay!
They have *everything*
who the hell stares into a lamp for 2 hours straight. lol
"I stared at one for about 3 hours one day" ummm....why?
The video dosent do them justice. In real life the arc is constantly but very slowly moving.
😂
oh
I heard there making a come back in the USA yet in England & Europe there disappearing very fast
Circuit diagram is incorrect.
Why would you stare at one for 3 hours you psychopath!!? Great video.
But why not cold cathodes ?
They would increase the lifetime...
Or build it as an induction lamp.
I love that orange glow, I can’t stand the led lights.
Exactly still enjoying the days they’re still around while I can
I want to add a trap for the garbage truck our dumpster or an old house I can't simply Break burned low pressure sodium light and my country they are Doors in the garbage truck closest all the stuff inside when the lightbulb brakes it'll catch garbage truck on fire
You looked at it for 3 hours? 😂
3:17
You looked at one for 3 hours one day?
Why????
I love sodium vapor lights ✨! I remember when I 🤔 was 5 years old 😳 and at my beach ⛱ house 🏠. Daddy took me and my little brothers 💙 to the 🛌 underground 🚇 parking. I was eating a grape lollipop 🍭. It was nighttime and my little brother Joseph, who was only 2 years old, said, "the lights are orange!" And then I said, "the lights are very pretty! I love the orange lights!" And Daddy said, "yes. You're gonna be starting kindergarten soon and you're gonna be learning all about colors."
wuick response
55W LPS will not restrike instantly, the 18 and 35 will not 55 with HPF ballast
444 likes!
Sodium can and will explode when exposed to water. I don't think breaking these in a bucket of water is a great idea.
SOX/LPS is the best lighting for outside roads, no glare, in any weather, no GLARE, better details contrasts. NO GLARE, white light should never be used for roads. DUMB white light, YELLOW, no glare.