Comments on: Flourescent strips, pulsing lights and a chiller cabinet.

Question: Flourescent strips, pulsing lights and a chiller cabinet.

twine42 — Fri, 28 May 2004 05:43:34 -0800

A random question involving fluorescent strips, pulsing lights and possibly a chiller cabinet. [MI]

Last night I spent some time watching a chilled cola vending machine. It had a glass front and a pair of strip lights inside the case.

Every now and then I was aware of the noise of a fan running with a pulsing speed at about 2 - 3 Hz. Whenever it happened I was aware of a strange pulsing of light down the tubes. 'Dark' spots of light were being created on each audible pulse and then flowed down the tube to be sucked back in at the other end in perfect syncronisation with the creation.

The pulses of 'light' and 'dark' were apparently the same size and travelled quite slowly. There were probably about 30 bands down a four foot tube. I'd guess that the air inside the vender was in the 2-6 celcius area.

To make things worse, I'm not 100% convinced that the sounds wasn't coming from a coffee vending machine on the opposite side of the room.

What the hell was going on?

By: fletchmuy

fletchmuy — Fri, 28 May 2004 07:53:58 -0800

You were tripping on acid.

By: trbrts

trbrts — Fri, 28 May 2004 08:23:30 -0800

yeah I'm going to have to say acid as well

By: bshort

bshort — Fri, 28 May 2004 08:38:59 -0800

Yeah, I'm with fletch and trbrts.

A friend of mine once had that happen, except he was looking at the ceiling for half an hour.

By: twine42

twine42 — Fri, 28 May 2004 08:51:54 -0800

nope... definitely no drugs involved (I wish) and several other people saw it too...

All together now... "#If you've never seen an elephant ski, then you've never been on acid..."

By: thomcatspike

thomcatspike — Fri, 28 May 2004 10:17:37 -0800

florescent lights flicker off and on at high speed; they are high frequency pulses, yet your eyes cant' see it. The ballast may be going out. If the coke machine changed to pepsi then your on acid:P

By: hattifattener

hattifattener — Fri, 28 May 2004 13:58:29 -0800

There are weird little plasma instabilities that can occur in neon tubes and so I assume they also happen in other kinds of gas-discharge tubes. Maybe the fan (or chiller compressor motor?) was drawing enough current to make the power sag a little and produce some visible effect in the tube? Or maybe it was just the cosmic consciousness making contact with you through the vending machine.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Fri, 28 May 2004 14:57:15 -0800

i'd guess that you're seeing some kind of standing wave that's not quite steady. perhaps the contacts aren't so good in the fan, and it's dumping noise into the supply when it runs (at whatever frequency the fan contacts are making/breaking contact). fluorescent lamps are unstable - the plasma would grow and grow til it goes pop, if they didn't have a ballast that damps the growth. it's possible that somehow the ballast is affected slightly by the noise from the fan motor, which is one way to get some kind of variation with time. but i don't have a full explanation, so this is just bullshit, really.

i don't think you're on drugs - i'm pretty sure i've seen the same thing myself, several times (i never really thought it that odd, perhaps because i've always been surprised these things work so steadily).

By: kaibutsu

kaibutsu — Fri, 28 May 2004 15:44:59 -0800

I'm in favor of the cosmic consciousness hypothesis. You should go and read VALIS immediately.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Fri, 28 May 2004 16:03:40 -0800

Besides the electrically or RF induced plasma instabilities, sound is also not an unlikely culprit at all, despite all the easily accesible LSD jokes.

See: cymatics.

So, yeah. You're *probably* not actually hallucinating when you think you see a candle flame dancing to the beat of that godforsaken longhaired hippy crap you're listening to while undoubtably having an opium orgy.