| Wife turned on a hall light switch last night, big flash by one of the hall | lights, and the ckt breaker tripped.
I had this happen once on a 3 bulb mini-chandelier. It had these small socket bulbs of about 40 watts each.
One bulb blew hard (very loud pop) and the circuit went out. After I reset the breaker, none of the bulbs lit up, so I was at first concerned about wiring damage or maybe the switch. I proceeded to change bulbs just to check and that when I started seeing just how bad this was. Fortunately there appeared to be no wiring or switch damage. But the bulb that initially blew also took out the other two bulbs with it. Usually I see a break in the filament in these clear bulbs. But in this case one bulb had no filament remaining. Piese of the glass stem and a couple loose pieces of support wires, along with a very blackened inside surface were all I could see. In addition to that, several spots on the screw-in shell were melted through. The other two bulbs showed significant filament destruction and some screw shell melting.
| Was about 2 days since putting in a new bulb there. | Was the el-cheapo brand picked up at CVS, and made in China. | | Replaced the bulb with a GE one, and so far everything seems O.K. | | Question: I can't imagine how anything, like e.g., a broken filament | perhaps, can short out the circuit. | But, perhaps ?
The arc itself is very high current and can trip the breaker if it stays long enough.
| Can anyone think of a bulb failure mechanism that might trip the breaker ?
Any that leads to an arc. Most do.
| Or, do you think the bulb explanation might just be a coincidence ? | All works fine, now, though.
All is fine mostly because you have a more reliable bulb, now.
Maybe you got a batch of Chinese bulbs intended for Japan. Those would blow sooner, since Japan uses only 100 volts.