Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?
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Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?
#2Oh interesting, I'd noticed that at some point between my childhood and now, burned out bulbs stopped taking out the entire rest of the light string. I wonder if the bypass wire is a new(ish) development, or if we just had cheap Christmas lights when I was younger.
Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?
#3Oh interesting, I'd noticed that at some point between my childhood and now, burned out bulbs stopped taking out the entire rest of the light string. I wonder if the bypass wire is a new(ish) development, or if we just had cheap Christmas lights when I was younger.
You had cheap Christmas lights. We had both. We had the actual bubble lights. Those were more expensive at the time. A bulb could burn out in one of the bubblers and the remaining bubblers would work.
Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?
#4Unfortunately, the bypass wire doesn't actually always burn out to make the rest of the lights work. There is a device called a LightKeeper pro that sends a larger "zap" through the string to encourage the needed bypass wire to burn out. Its saved me a bunch of time figuring out which bulb was bad in a string of lights.
Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?
#5So why aren't the bulbs hooked up in parallel?
Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?
#6So why aren't the bulbs hooked up in parallel?
Probably to save wire, if you hooked em up in parallel you'd need to send a wire to every bulb from the outlet.
With 10 bulbs at 1 inch spacing, you're wiring 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 9 + 10 = 55 inches of wire instead of 10
Follows a roughly N^2 law
Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?
#7So why aren't the bulbs hooked up in parallel?
Probably to save wire, if you hooked em up in parallel you'd need to send a wire to every bulb from the outlet. With 10 bulbs at 1 inch spacing, you're wiring 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 9 + 10 = 55 inches of wire instead of 10 Follows a roughly N^2 law
Huh? Why not just use two wires and connect one wire to the other with each bulb.
Like this: http://www.planetchristmas.com/Images/MinisA.gif
I think the real answer is that if you did it this way (in traditional pre-transformer light sets), each bulb would have to be rated for 120v, or whatever your local line voltage is, which would make them both more expensive, and more dangerous.
Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?
#8So why aren't the bulbs hooked up in parallel?
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Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?
#9So why aren't the bulbs hooked up in parallel?
Probably to save wire, if you hooked em up in parallel you'd need to send a wire to every bulb from the outlet. With 10 bulbs at 1 inch spacing, you're wiring 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 9 + 10 = 55 inches of wire instead of 10 Follows a roughly N^2 law
Why would you need a separate wire for each bulb? Seems to me like you could have a ladder topology: two bus wires running from the outlet, and then the bulbs going between them.
Re: Are Christmas Lights in Series or Parallel?
#10So why aren't the bulbs hooked up in parallel?
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