Mechanism
The mantle is a roughly pear-shaped ramie-based artificial silk or rayon fabric bag made from silk or fabric impregnated with rare-earth metallic salts that will convert to solid oxides after being heated in a flame. A mantle will glow brightly in the visible spectrum while emitting little infrared radiation. The rare earth oxides (cerium) and actinide (thorium) in the mantle have a low emissivity in the infrared (in comparison with an ideal black body), but have high emissivity in the visible spectrum. This property is known as candoluminescence. Hence, when heated by a kerosene or liquified petroleum gas flame, the mantle emits radiation that is mostly visible light, with relatively little energy in the unwanted infrared, increasing the luminous efficiency.
The mantle aids the combustion process by keeping the flame small and contained inside itself at higher fuel flow rates than in a simple lamp. This concentration of combustion inside the mantle improves the transfer of heat from the flame to the mantle.
The mantle shrinks after all the fabric material has burnt away and becomes very fragile after this first use.
Read more about this topic: Gas Mantle
Famous quotes containing the word mechanism:
“The law isn’t justice. It’s a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.”
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extrahuman architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
—Federico García Lorca (1898–1936)