How many filaments will burn this Xmas?

[maradcliff]

Here's a question I bet no one can answer.....

How many light bulb filaments will burn throughout the USA this Christmas season. The number is probably too large to fit on any calculator.... Just think, if everyone had 300 lights on their tree, times the number of people that have a tree, that would be a super huge number. But that dont take into account those that decorate their whole lawn, have more than one tree, the public parks that light the whole park with a million or more bulbs, the cities that decorate every light pole, the trillions of lights in the stores and businesses, and the list goes on.... Yeah, there are some people that dont decorate at all, but they are insignificant compared to all the other lights. I went to a local park last night. They have 1.2 million lights this year. I took my view off that entire park and looked at one bulb. That got me thinking about this...... And come to think about it, where the heck do all these bulbs come from?????

Next week, the question will be: "how many watts do these lights all consume"? :) Maybe there is an actual (rough) figure that the power companies could provide......

Mark

[Frank]

Power company spokesman said it would cost $14 worth of electricity to light average Christmas tree this season ;)

Frank

[hallerb]

LED lights look great have LONG life, and cost a small fraction of regular lamps.

certinally under a buck for the holidays

[Sev]

I sometimes like to ask myself questions like this- usually don't stop till I get a satisfactory answer. Taking your figure of 300 lights per tree, multiply it by 100 million trees as a rough guess at US tree prevalence, then say simply double it to include all those other lights you mention, gives 60 billion lights. A large number to be sure, but many curious calculations yield more extravagant sums. Some multiple of this would give a global figure- perhaps 4-5x. Just to keep you busy for the holidays, what is the total volume in cubic yards(or meters if you prefer) of of the world's human population?

[HeyBub]

I know! I know! (waves hand in air!).

But I won't tell you.

I can say that the entire world's population, if stacked like cordwood, would fit in a cubic mile. Further, the 2,000-odd salt domes along the Gulf Coast average six cubic miles of salt. Each.

And, if we could stand the population density of Hong Kong, we could all live in the state of Georgia (which is pretty grim when you think on it).

[Mark Lloyd]

I put out a lot of LED strings this year. A couple of them failed within the first 2 days. Maybe it's just "infant mortality".

Both of these strings are the type with an internal full wave rectifier. I expect to examine one to see if I can tell what failed.

[Mark Lloyd]

And how many barrels of oil are burned to generate electricity for them?

I remember hearing once that the total volume of the world's INSECT population would exceed that.

[avid_hiker]

That depends also..........if all the bulbs are GE Light Bulbs. If so.......the number would be even higher!! GE sucks.

[Bob F]

I have a nieghbor that claims he puts up 50,000 lights on his house/yard. I went to one house that had 3 - 200 amp services to power the lights.

Bob

[maradcliff]

Here's an interesting fact.....

Figuring the avarage male penis is 6 inches. If all the penises from every man on earth were removed and lined up end to end, they would encircle the entire earth approximately 12.253 times. Or that would be roughly 610,346 miles of penis.

Of course, in order to cross the oceans, lakes and rivers, they would have to be strung together on a rope, like beads.

Everyone needs to know this ......

[maradcliff]

Look at this one:

There are more to be found here....

[avid_hiker]

Well if you put me in the line...make it 13 times around.