What's Inside A Lightbulb? Twenty Inches Of Tungsten Coil

You may know that an illuminated light tuber uses a tungsten filament.

What's even cooler is that it's got 20 inches of double-coiled strand - and tungsten is a crisp vegetable that, beneath normal circumstances, can't twist at all.

How do they produce out a crisp steel to a super gaunt badge and then curl it up not only once, but then curl up the initial coil?

The answer is in this receptive video (below) by University of Illinois engineering highbrow Bill Hammack, aka "The Engineer Guy," who not only dismantles a light tuber but moreover presents animations and other illustrations to uncover how this thing is manufactured.

This is the initial in the third array of videos constructed by Hammack, who progressing tackled such captivating subjects as how an old-school, pre-digital flight tape deck functions .

"We especially directed the final array and this array toward the Wired/Slashdot/Make publication community," Hammack told me in an e-mail. "While you wish it receptive to people who do not have as well sufficient systematic background, you always try to put something in there that will astonishment the person with more knowledge."

Mission accomplished!