@stspringer: I think it is very admirable that you are taking a "hands on" experimental approach to learning electricity and electronics. You are in the process of learning some valuable lessons about voltage dividers and practical values of the resistance associated with them. Take careful notes, and try to keep a journal or a notebook of what you measure, lest you forget what you did before and keep repeating the same thing while expecting different results. Burning up resistors is all part of the learning experience. We have all done it at one time or another. Just determine what went wrong, correct it, and move on.
Voltage dividers as used today are very seldom used to provide significant levels of
power to a load, such as your 1.5 V incandescent lamp for example. The main reason is they are terribly inefficient for that purpose. Instead, most applications of voltage dividers use them as a low-level signal attenuator, the volume control in a radio for example, or to create a low-level, relatively high impedance, control signal for some
other circuit, such as a user-adjustable power supply output voltage for a programmable power supply.
As you can imagine, while the basic voltage divider equation hasn't changed, the actual values selected for R1 and R2 can be all over the map while still providing the same attenuation ratio. The only thing that changes is how the voltage divider appears electrically to circuit with which it is connected.
In days of old, when incandescent lighting was first used to illuminate theater stage lighting, physically very large variable resistances (called rheostats) were used in series with the lights to control their brightness. These variable resistances were typically capable of dissipating hundreds, or even thousands, of watts of power. The entire back-stage, behind-the-scenes area, was kept toasty warm in the winter from the heat given up by immense banks (often hundreds in a Broadway production) of these rheostats. Of course the heat during a summer production was pretty much unbearable.
That all changed, practically overnight, during the middle of the twentieth century with the advent of solid-state lighting controls. Some prior efforts had used mercury-vapor thyratrons to control lighting intensity, which had the advantage of allowing separation between the control electronics and the thyratron, but it was all pretty much a kludge.
Good hunting on your electronic adventure! Make sure to nail the basics before moving further into the jungle.