As I was watching my falcons drop the ball again against the 49ers yesterday, I could not help but, like always, wonder about my status on physics blogging. So here goes nothin, PLASMA TVS'S! The general goal of the machine is to light up tiny colored fluorescent lights which as a group produce the image that we see. Each pixel is made of of three of these fluorescent lights, red, green and blue. Similar to the Cathode-ray television, the plasma tv varies the intensity of light to produce each color in the spectrum.

The main component of the TV is obviously plasma, a substance composed of free flowing ions and electrons,normally contained in xenon and neon gas. In order to ionize the gas in one of the cells, the computer inside the Plasma TV charges the electrodes that intersect the cell, and does this thousands of times per second for each individual cell in the TV.:glee: After the charge is applied, current runs through the gas in the cell, which in turn stimulates said gases to release ultraviolet photons, which then also react with phosphors on the inside of the cell as well.

When the particles collide, one of the phosphor's electrons jumps to a higher energy level and the atom heats up. Eventually the particle jumps back to its ground state and emits light, as we all know, just as do the photons in any other source of light such as an incandescent bulb.