Flourescents (was: What tools do you carry, always

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Thu Dec 7 21:05:47 2000

> Yes, of course that's how flourescent lamps work. I think
> they even still have mercury vapor in them. However, I questioned
> whether the dinky little lamp in a scanner would zap a windowed
> (and presumably stickered) EEPROM.

The glass of the normal fluorescent lamp acts as a pretty good
shortwave UV filter. Otherwise the things would be dangerous.

Shortwave UV lamps use a quartz envelope rather than glass, and
ceramic windowed EPROM packages use a quartz window. This makes
the lamps and the ceramic windowed packages are more expensive than
they would otherwise be.
Received on Thu Dec 07 2000 - 21:05:47 GMT