4 Feb
2015
4 Feb
'15
4:56 p.m.
From: Jacob Ritorto
My NASA EE buddy recommended working up an appropriate
load from
regular household lightbulbs. They won't light, naturally, but you can
dial in your load by simply choosing certain wattages and doing the math.
Err, both tungsten and carbon filament incandescents have very different
resistance when hot (lit) and cold. To make it even more, they are of opposite
sign: with tungsten, the resistance increases as it heats up (a nice
stabilizing feedback), and with carbon, it goes the other way. So if you're
not running enough current to light the bulb, you can't use the printed watt
rating; you'll have to use an ohm-meter.
Noel