this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2026
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For incandescent bulbs the power drop around the zero voltage cross doesn't last long enough to extinguish the filament, since it's basically just glowing from being heated. The only lights which actually do "flicker" under nominal conditions are old ballast driven florescent lights. Most modern LEDs rectify the AC and modern CFLs boost the line frequency to like 20kHz to prevent the arc from getting extinguished.
A lot of christmas lights still flicker. Not sure how they're wired, but I think they just feed AC to the diode, so it's off for the negative half of the wave
Modern CFLs use an arc? I thought they were cathode based, emitting UV from forcing mercury vapour to dance
mercury vapour dances ?!