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Show Makes Powerful Light Adding a minute part of a rare metal, rubidium, to mercury usually used in mercury lamps has resulted in the development of a lamp whose light approximates sunlight. Tho metal causes the lamp to give red rays. In addition to the mercury spectrum. The lamp is said to have a life ten times as long as an ordinary or-dinary incandescent lamp. Rubidium costs $7 a dram, but only one flve-hundredths flve-hundredths part of the metal is used in each lamp to change (he light hue from green to light red. Previously physicists had improved the mercury lamp by adding potassium to the mercury, but the potassium is said to disintegrate the glass bulb or tube of the lamp. Popular Mechanics Magazine. |