I am curious about the chemistry of the arc lamp (an indirectly for the incandescent bulbs) thus I would like to ask the following.
It is a common understanding that the electrons pushed inside an arc lamp -- let's assume a carbon one, that is with electrodes in graphite -- will collide on the atoms of the carbon crystal and increase their kinetic energy rising those in the cathode to about 3600 degrees and those in the anode to 4200 degrees. My questions are:
- Why is the cathode, where the electrons arrive first and at full energy, cooler than the anode?
- What kind of molecules are produced at the electrodes? It is said that carbon evaporates at the electrodes when the current is allowed to flow between them. What is the vapour of carbon? From wikipedia, dicarbon is listed, but what would be the reaction from graphite (pure carbon) to dicarbon?
- If dicarbon is produced by evaporation on the arc lamp, would that be produced also in the old incandescent lamps that used carbon filaments, such as that made by Edison?
- Does dicarbon react with oxygen? Does it oxidise to carbon dioxide or monoxide?
- And finally, how does dicarbon produce light? I imagine that it must be at a high energy state and photons are released with the decay of the electrons to their ground levels, is that correct? Is there some kind of quantitative measure of why arc lamps are more luminous than incandescent or halogen lamps?
Thank you