Chapter 28, Problem 47EAP

A string of holiday lights can be wired in series, but all the bulbs go out if one burns out because that breaks the circuit. Most lights today are wired in series, but each bulb has a special fuse that short-circuits the bulb—making a connection around it—if it burns out, thus keeping the other lights on. Suppose a string of 50 lights is connected in this way and plugged into a 120 V outlet. By what factor does the power dissipated by each remaining bulb increase when the first bulb burns out’!