Woah that's pretty cool! Before you send it to the recylcing center fill it with water and wash off all the phosphors to make it clear lol. hey, it wasn't a mainlighter at least!

cool picture anyways, stick a 9V battery on the pins and watch the cathode vaporize

what would happen if you used this in a fixture on the proper ballast? would the filament simply burn up opening the circut of would it kill the ballast for some reason?

if it was instant start the cathodes would stay intact, rapid start or preheat and they would burn up in a few seconds brightly
i don't see why it would kill the ballast as it would be as if the lamp is missing when the cathode breaks

ahh i didn't know if current would leak due to the punctured tube. i guess that's the cool thing about IS then, about the only good/interesting thing lol.how come with IS it doesn't burn up? are the cathodes like incnadescent filaments or are they different?

I once connected a 24v source to a T5 once, blew the cathodes straight off.

@Mike, the instant start ballasts(magnetic or electronic) don't provide any cathode heating to the lamp so there is never current flowing through the cathode when the lamp isn't lit up , i belive the cathodes are basically 3.5V filaments(RS), the F20T12 and lower have 9V cathodes..the trigger start ballasts have 9V cathode heating, the F32T8 is actually a rapid start lamp, the new ones i installed today at work with tandem 8ft fixtures said on the carton "Rapid start or instant start use" or something like that

I was actually considering installing it and watching the cathode vaporize...
Today I (sorta) fried a True-Value F40 that was EOL with a broken cathode on an Advance 2XF32T8 ballast with 560v OCV...it just glowed dimly like a mercury starved lamp and I got some orange flashing at the offending end...didn't let it go too long like that though...didn't want to fry the ballast.