Explain how the heating effect of electric current is utilized in an electric bulb (called incandescent lamp) to produce light.

Explanation

When an electric current passes through a very thin, high-resistance tungsten filament of an electric bulb, the fflament becomes white-hot and emits light.
Here, tungsten metal is used for making the filament of an electric bulb because it has a very high melting point (of `3380^@C`). Due to its very high melting point, the tungsten filament can be kept white-hot without melting away.

The other properties of tungsten which make it SUitable for making filament of an electric bulb are its high flexibility and law rate of evaporation at high temperature.
If air is present in an electric bulb, then the extremely hot tungsten filament would burn up quickly in the presence of oxygen in air.
So, the electric bulb is filled With a chemically nonreactive (inactive) gas like argon or nitrogen (or a mixture of both). The gases like argan and nitrogen do not react with the hot tungsten filament and hence prolong the life of the filament of the electric bulb.
In electric bulb, most of the electric energy for (power) consumed by the filament appears as heat (due to which the bulb becomes hot), only a small amount of electric energy (power) is converted into light.
So, filament type electric bulbs are not power- efficient. On the other hand, tube lights are much more power efficient because they have no filaments.