Another year, another round of lectures and demonstrations about gases, light spectra and color mixing.

And again, the kids were raving about the effect of LPS lamps in the classroom. As in literally have to interrupt the lecture because they are too excited to be able to shut up (a good thing of course, in this specific case, though i got close to losing my voice trying to calm them down this year).

So far the counter of kids who ask where you can buy these things remains at 2 (i always have to disappoint them - you can buy them, but they're too expensive for most 14 year olds) - but the enthousiasm remains year after year. It's on par with blacklight and fluorescence of the clothes the people are wearing.

Does anyone else work in physics-related educational functions here, and demostrates the perfectly monochromatic, bright light of LPS lamps?

I've been using my own 90w SOX lamp for these demos, but since the enthousiasm is so big - even from the stage lighting crews from the auditorium - i might go look for stuff to buy for the school itself.

At a small party (when we were late teens), I once took a 35w SOX, 400w HPS and a 125w BLB MV to show. In the dark room, everyone was having a party with the MV, while they were surprised by the SOX, but wanted more light (35w is too dim for them). So that's when I pulled out the 400w HPS, and everyone enjoyed it (we took it outdoors and were wearing sunglasses of course!).


When they wanted to know where to buy, I showed that the SOX and MV aren't available at stores anymore, but the 400w HPS is. For a whole 2600rs ($30) they could get a full 400w HPS setup.

Build them a twin enclosure with LPS and HPS lamps of similar output (maybe tune the HPS power a little to get a more LPS like color), and a sliding door that allows smoothly changing the emitted light between the 2 lamps. See how you can turn on and off color rendering while the light level and color appears to stay the same



Back when i was in high school 12 grade (in the 00s) we (a few students) were planning a night event for the kids entering high school, to show them off some stuff from different faculties, which included Physics, Electronics, Computers (software development), Arts and others

It was not supposed to be particularly about lighting, but some lighting features were planned including UV and fluorescence, large geometric shapes planted in the grass field with LEDs (back when it was innocent 5mm LEDs with cool colors, and when LED tape was non existent so really wiring a large array of LEDs with wire), lightning simulator (flashing FL lamps on a timer + synced thunder sound clip), "lake" of water tainted with the contents of a glow stick with turbulence, and other stuff

The event never materialized for a variety of causes that showed up, but many of the light features i planned for it, i later made for the school proms of next years

For few years after i graduated, i was still in contact with the school, and lending them lighting from my collection for the prom evenings - the Blacklight Merc lamp, loads of FL fittings with "color tubes" (ordinary Daylight T8s wrapped in cellophane), Halogen floods (500w linears and PAR38 color floods), the Lightning simulator, Strobe (large array of troffers made to flash in sync by a 555 timer), shaded dim desk lamps for lighting the sound and lighting control desks behind the stage, as well as loads of extension cables, splitters, and my own presence to wire it all up and operate it during the event. Occasionally other stuff - once i brought a desktop PC from home