this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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Science Memes

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[โ€“] socsa@piefed.social 22 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

For incandescent bulbs the power drop around the zero voltage cross doesn't last long enough to extinguish the filament, since it's basically just glowing from being heated. The only lights which actually do "flicker" under nominal conditions are old ballast driven florescent lights. Most modern LEDs rectify the AC and modern CFLs boost the line frequency to like 20kHz to prevent the arc from getting extinguished.

[โ€“] deltapi@lemmy.world 1 points 11 hours ago

Modern CFLs use an arc? I thought they were cathode based, emitting UV from forcing mercury vapour to dance