No need to patronise mate, I'm educated enough :p

Let's scrub the word 'burns' and replace it with 'emits' instead then.

Ok, so if you're going to be a smarty pants you're going to have to explain how, 'cos as far as I'm concerned when an element is stimulated to emit photons, the emitted photons are of discrete wavelengths which can't change.

And the mix of these wavelenghts creates the light with a particular colour temp, which therefor also can't change.

I could be wrong of course, it wouldn't be the first time, but if you're going to call me then you have to back it up

Any one element gives off many frequencies and whilst they do not change the weighting of those frequencies does depend on circumstance and can change. So even for a single element a change in weighting can occur and that means in a change in colour. Furthermore xenon lights contain other elements as well as xenon. I think there are generally a mix of other gases included when manufactured and then there are pollutants, the electrodes and housing being obvious examples. Sorry, in a previous life I used to work a lot with xenon lights. They have a discrete lifetime and reasonably stable colour for only part of that lifetime.

Edited 13 December, 201114 yr by TsvRS

Nice one mate, I appreciate a factual response, rather than "I'm right 'cos I've seen it" (not accusing other posters of that in this thread either ).

I'm a laser engineer by profession but I work with solid state lasers where the gain medium (equivalent to the Xenon gas in a headlight) emits one (or maybe two) wavelengths and this never ever changes as the medium cannot degrade.

I know that to give you a white light output the Xenon must emit many wavelengths, and that also these physically cannot change.

That is fact and was the basis of my argument.

However, what I didn't consider were things like voltage drop due to degrading electrodes etc which I guess will effect the stimulation of the gas and therefor the weighting of the wavelengths produced.

Every day is a school day as they say- can't say I've noticed older Xenon lights looking pink but I'll keep an eye out for it now.

Are the ring ones better than the nightbreakers you had?

There's not much in it really, but I still need to manually lower the headlight beam to get the full advantage. I had to do that on my previous motor as these high power bulbs seem to throw the beam a bit higher.

Mac

I'd get the headlights re-aligned if the beams are too high on the '0' position. Fairly easy to do if you have a convenient garage door/wall to shine on. Mark the initial top of the beam, with say a post it ,then tweak downwards evenly both sides. There are a few white plastic adjusting screws which take allen keys.

Repeat as necessary. I've got the newer longer life version of Osram Night Breakers.

Edited 14 December, 201114 yr by gregoir