Neon lamp indicators embedded in power strip switches indicate whether the switch is ON or OFF.
When the neon lamp is ON in a dark environment (lights of the room are off) the lamp start to flickering and some times it goes off for a few seconds.
When I switch the lights of the room on, it stops flickering and remains bright. Even when I unlock my phone in the dark near the lamp, it stops flickering!
Is the mechanism of making brightness in neon lamps is related to the luminous intensity of the around environment?
UPDATE: I captured my observations with my iPhone and uploaded it to the YouTube. Here is the link of the video: https://youtu.be/1jlUmEfGHZA
All lights of my room was turned off. There was no connected plugs to sockets of the power strip. The only light was screen brightness of my MacBook Pro that was not connected to the power supply. I was decreasing and increasing the brightness of the screen during the video. The two last lights are the brightness of my phone.
Answer
This is a common phenomenon: neon pilot lights have a limited lifetime, and after many years of use, they begin to flicker, then they finally go dark. They no longer can operate at line voltage, but instead require a higher voltage for stable operation.
Also, neon pilot lights can act as photosensors. Try this with a flickering neon bulb: shine a red LED on it. Then shine a blue LED on it. If both LEDs are roughly the same brightness, then the blue LED should have a much greater effect. You're seeing the same photoelectric effect that won Einstein the 1921 Nobel, leading to the "photon" concept.
All gas-discharge tubes suffer from a common problem: the gas atoms tend to become embedded in the metal surface of electrodes, so over many years the gas pressure falls as well as the gas mixture being altered.
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