The NYT has an article on why some people are having a hard time switching from incandescent to fluorescent bulb:
In trying to replace — depose — incandescent light bulb light, you’re asking people to disengage from a gravitation as primal as the attraction to the sun’s light or fire, which are incandescent. Like the bulb and its filament, they make light from heat, to create a glowing focal source, or a “flame.”
Fluorescent bulbs activate a gas inside a tube, lighting a fluorescent coating that glows and creates an even, diffuse light without a center. Born in a lab, they don’t have much traction on the human experience since the dawn — incandescent — of man.
Also:
It could be that America splits along cultural lines in the debate. In Asia, people are more comfortable with fluorescent light, said Mr. Gordon, the designer, who has clients there.
“Asians have developed an architecture that makes use of diffused light sources,” he explained. Rice-paper windows and room-dividing walls in Japanese houses, for example, spread light evenly, with few shadows, unlike incandescent light, which has a source point, like the flame of a candle.
Whatever it is, buy fluorescent bulb instead of incandescent. It saves energy and the environment.
One reply on “[1046] Of fluorescent versus incandescent bulb”
Not Western-culture, not sex, not language etc… (You can find them at Malaysia). But transforming from fluorescence to incandescence is the real culture shock indeed.