How does plasma conduct electricity

The filaments at the ends also release electrons. Collisions quickly multiply their number. However, ions and electrons respond much faster than that, hence the process stays the same. Click here for more about the fluorescent lamp ] As noted, the Sun consists of plasma. Another important plasma in nature is the ionosphere , starting about km above ground. Here electrons are torn off atoms by sunlight of short wavelengths, ranging from the ultra-violet to X-rays: they do not recombine too readily because the atmosphere becomes increasingly rarefied at high altitudes and collisions are not frequent.

The lowest part of the ionosphere, the "D layer" at km, still has enough collisions to cause it to disappear after sunset. Then the remaining ions and electrons recombine, while in the absence of sunlight new ones are no longer produced. However, that layer is re-established at sunrise. Above km, collisions are so infrequent that the ionosphere persists day and night.

The topside ionosphere extends many thousands of km into space and merges with the magnetosphere , whose plasmas are generally more rarefied but also much hotter. The ions and electrons of the magnetospheric plasma come in part from the ionosphere below, in part from the solar wind next paragraph , and many details of their entry and heating are still unclear. Finally, there exists the interplanetary plasma--the solar wind.

Each pixel is made up of three gas-filled cells. The gas is a mixture of neon and xenon. Each cell is painted on the inside with a phosphor that, when stimulated, will emit red, green or blue visible light. A grid of tiny electrodes allows electric current to be supplied to each cell in the pixel. When current flows, the gas in the cell ionises to a plasma state, and as a result of this, UV light is emitted.

The phosphor coating the walls of the cell absorbs this UV light and is stimulated to emit visible light, either red, green or blue. How many pixels a plasma display has depends on the resolution of the display. By varying the pulses of current flowing through the different cells, the control system can increase or decrease the intensity of each cell colour to create hundreds of different combinations of red, green and blue.

In this way, the control system can produce colours across the entire spectrum. Add to collection. A typical gas, such as nitrogen or hydrogen sulfide, is made of molecules that have a net charge of zero, giving the gas volume as a whole a net charge of zero. Plasmas, being made of charged particles, may have a net charge of zero over their whole volume but not at the level of individual particles. That means the electrostatic forces between the particles in the plasma become significant, as well as the effect of magnetic fields.

Being made of charged particles, plasmas can do things gases cannot, like conduct electricity. And since moving charges make magnetic fields, plasmas also can have them. In an ordinary gas, all the particles will behave roughly the same way. So if you have gas in a container and let it cool to room temperature, all the molecules inside will, on average, be moving at the same speed, and if you were to measure the speed of lots of individual particles you'd get a distribution curve with lots of them moving near the average and only a few either especially slowly or quickly.

That's because in a gas the molecules, like billiard balls, hit each other and transfer energy between them. That doesn't happen in a plasma, especially in an electric or magnetic field. A magnetic field can create a population of very fast particles, for example.

Most plasmas aren't dense enough for particles to collide with one another very often, so the magnetic and electrostatic interactions become more important. Certain regions of Earth's atmosphere contain some plasma created primarily by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.

Collectively, these regions are called the ionosphere. The extreme upper layers of Earth's atmosphere, the thermosphere and exosphere and to a lesser extent the mesosphere , also contain a fair amount of plasma mixed in with gas atoms and molecules.

Above the atmosphere, Earth is surrounded by a magnetic "bubble" called the magnetosphere. Most of the particles in the magnetosphere are ionized plasma. Electric and magnetic fields often channel the flow of charged plasma particles. Plasma in Earth's magnetosphere sometimes flows along Earth's magnetic field towards the polar regions, creating the colorful light shows in the sky which we call the aurora or Southern and Northern Lights.

These beautiful displays occur when energetic plasma particles collide with gases in the atmosphere, causing them to glow in much the same way that fluorescent and neon lights shine. Prominences , giant loops of glowing matter suspended above the Sun, are another example of beautiful natural light shows created by plasmas.