Stuff that Glows - by Invader_Xan

This article also exists as a thread by Invader_Xan, it may grow in the future as more people post in the thread with relevant information and Xan learns more. DMP would like to extend its gratitude and its respect to Xan for his time and effort in making it. He will dispense his advice... now :

I don't know about you, but I love making things glow. Must be that whole mad scientist thing I have going on. So what's the deal with glowing things, and how can you make yourself look really cool under UV light? Read on...

UV and Dayglo - Fluorescence

Essentially, fluorescent things take ultraviolet light and turn it into visible light. As a result, they look very bright in daylight or glow under ultraviolet. Aside from buying expensive paints or powders, there are a fair few things that glow under UV...

Washing Powder / Optical Brighteners

This is how your whites look whiter than white. Washing powders contain optical brighteners that glow purple under UV. Normally, this cancels out the yellow colour that old fabrics tend to acquire after a number of uses. So when you go to a rave with a freshly washed white tshirt, thats why you glow more, the UV light is reacting to the stuff thats left there by the laundry powder.

Basically, be it clothing or sock poi, if you want it to glow brighter, give it a good wash!

Glowing Drinks

Drinking something that glows is always a good way to get some funny looks... All of these things will fluoresce under UV: Tonic Water, Bitter Lemon, Vermouth, Blue Curacao, Absinthe and Mountain Dew. The quinine in tonic water will glow under a black light, creating a cool effect for a party. Simple drinks like Vodka or Gin & Tonics can add a nice glow

Some sports drinks also glow. Experiment a little!

Fluorescent Dyes and Inks

Lots of fluorescent compounds are found as inks. Be careful if you're going to play with them though -- they stain. Badly.
Cheap highlighter pens are a good source. For a good supply of glowing water (in most colours you might want), try this -- open one up (get one that's easy to dismantle) and (while wearing gloves!) open up the cotton wool ink reservoir with a craft knife. Then just soak it in a glass of water (give it a bit of a squeeze under water to get more ink out). In fact, somebody's made a nice little vid of this... If you want to buy a pure pigment though, one to go for is called fluorescein. It's fairly safe and non-toxic.

Face and Body paints - If you get the good ones, these will be specially formulated to not dry out your skin too much. They come in all kinds of colours and because they glow under UV, they'll also protect your skin from it! Bonus!

Gemstones - Several gemstones can fluoresce under UV. Some types of calcite, fluorite, quartz, opal, agate and amber, as well as rubies and emeralds. Apparently English Fluorite is one of the brightest. The whole thing is quite hit-or-miss though. Some glow, some don't.

Tooth Whiteners - You can always spot who uses whitening toothpaste in a club. They're the ones with the blue/green glowing teeth!

Chlorophyll - The stuff that makes plants green actually glows deep red. If you want to see for yourself, get yourself a pestle & mortar, some spinach leaves and some everclear or rubbing alcohol. Pulp the leaves with a little alcohol. Then add enough alcohol to cover the rest of the leaves and let it soak for a while. Your alcohol should turn bright green with chlorophyll.

Glow in the Dark - (Phosphorescence)

As any school kid knows, phosphorescent things absorb light energy and release it gradually. To be honest, that's about all there is to know on the matter. Glow in the dark things can be good to use in place of fluorescent things, as they absorb lots of light from UV and continue glowing even when the UV isn't on them.

There are a lot of glow in the dark Paints and Powders available to buy, as well as all sorts of toys and stickers. They tend to vary in quality though (some glow for a long time, some hardly at all). If you're interested, a chemical often used to produce a glow in the dark effect is zinc sulphide.

Perhaps ironically, phosphorus isn't actually phosphorescent, so don't even think about it.

Glowsticks - (Chemiluminescence)

Chemical reactions that emit light. There are a surprising amount of them, from luminol (used on CSI to show blood stains) to the different animals all across the planet that produce their own light, chemiluminescence is everywhere.

So what are glowsticks all about ? They consist of two tubes, one inside the other, filled with two different chemicals. The one inside is completely sealed and made of thin glass. "Snapping" a glowstick breaks this glass, letting the chemicals mix. They then react together and glow.

Interested in making glowing liquids? Well ok then...

The Cyalume Reaction

Cyalume is the industry name for one of the most widely used glowstick chemicals. Basically, you need the following ingredients:

Cyalume + Dye + Hydrogen Peroxide

The moment you add the peroxide, the mixture should start to glow. The dye itself (called a fluorophor) can be one of a number of UV reactive dyes, depending on the colour you'd like. Most fluorescent dyes should work. My personal favourite is called Rhodamine Red.

If you want a brighter glow, try adding a little bicarbonate of soda to make the solution slightly alkaline.

The Luminol Reaction

Luminol, as I've already menioned, is used at crime scenes to detect blood. The reaction is as follows.

Luminol + Hydrogen Peroxide + Catalyst (eg: Iron or Copper)

In forensics, it reacts with the iron in blood. In your glowsticks, something like copper sulphate would probably be more suitable.

An actual recipe used by some glowsticks goes like this :

4 g sodium carbonate
0.2 g luminol
0.5 g ammonium carbonate
0.4 g copper sulfate pentahydrate
50 ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide
approx. 1 litre of distilled waters

UVC (wavelength = 100 - 280nm)

UVC is deadly. It's powerful enough to rip apart your DNA. Thankfully, virtually all of it is blocked by the Earth's atmosphere. It's used in some labs as a germicide to kill dangerous bacteria. Niels Ryberg Finsen (1860-1904) was the first to employ UV rays in treating disease. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1903 and invented the Finsen curative lamp, which was used sucessfully through the 1950s.

There are two others, known as vacuum ultraviolet and deep ultraviolet.

These are absorbed by the air itself, which is a good thing, because otherwise they'd cook you instantly! We're not the only creatures to use UV though. Numerous animals can see UV, particularly bees, which use it to guide them to the centre of flowers. Scorpions glow under UV, though no one knows why. Some jellyfish too glow brightly in UV. Birds sometimes have patterns invisible to us, which can only be seen in ultraviolet.

If you have something you would like to see added to this article or have an idea as to how it could be improved then please say so in this thread : click here. Stuff thats already been suggested and will be included when someone has the time to do the research : more about how UV affects DNA, more about the light spectrum in general, more paints and powders, links to suppliers of the chemicals mentioned.

If you have the time and inclination to do any of the above research and would like to earn yourself a small amount of respect from this community and maybe a few DMP Groats that you can spend in the shop then please do so, it will be appreciated in our mission to provide good information on all things spinning related.