One of my hobbies is theatrical lighting design. Sometimes I find myself training new helpers in the mysterious arts of the theater. One of those arts is replacing lamps in lighting fixtures (“lighting instruments” in theater parlance).
Rule #1 of replacing a lamp: don’t touch the bulb. Why? Because the gunk from your skin causes a hotspot which melts the glass. That’s a thumb-sized hole in the bulb:
This is my new example of why these aren’t arbitrary rules. 🙂
My wife just gave me a funny “you are making this up!” look when I told her the same thing. 10 seconds later I had a good search with your post backing me up. 🙂
Cheers,
Paul