3 ms·

When you have a bottle full of this stuff, is the interior powder getting charged by photons as well via propagation? Or is it only the directly light-visible

When you have a bottle full of this stuff, is the interior powder getting charged by photons as well via propagation? Or is it only the directly light-visible surface that gets charged and is glowing? If the former, does having a larger interior volume of powder increase the glow duration, behaving as a sort of rechargeable glow battery? Or does it just generate heat or more brightness while lasting the same duration?

dekhn 4y ago
only the surface of a bottle of this kind will emit photons. The emission frequency and intensity is not enough to really make this propagate light significantly. Instead, you would suspend a tiny amount of this in a volume of transparent resin.
- at_a_remove 4y ago
  Being kind of a maniac for glow in the dark stuff, this isn't quite true. I've filled up flask bottles with glow gravel of this variety and, after a "charge," poured it out -- the interior gravel did indeed get charged. I think you would need much more thickness than a centimeter or two for the interiors not to get charged up. (Yes, I had a bunch of bottles filled up and arranged on a rope so they would glow softly during the night because I'm weird like that)
  - pengaru 4y ago
    Since you seem to have done some experiments, what effect does increasing the bottle size have on the glow? Duration or brightness changed? No visible effect?
    - at_a_remove 4y ago
      You max out pretty fast. Most people don't understand the incredibly wide (over so many orders of magnitude) ranges our eyes (and ears) function over. Once you're in the dark, the glow is quite visible but it wouldn't have been very notable before. And so the absorb-release cycle can penetrate rather rapidly. If I had to guess, with the gravel, that would die off at maybe a few centimeters of depth. Essentially, you're getting just surface area at a given brightness, despite the interior gravel getting charged. With the zinc sulfides, they really did take much longer to hit their max charge, although I never measured it.
      - batch12 4y ago
        > Most people don't understand the incredibly wide (over so many orders of magnitude) ranges our eyes (and ears) function over. For sure. Last year while walking through the woods on a cloudy, new moon, 3am morning I saw a green light piercing through the trees. It was difficult to find because it was over a hundred feet away. Once I reached it, I found a single green LED. It wasn't an ultra-bright variant or anything-- just a normal LED attached to a camera.
      - int_19h 4y ago
        I wonder, if one were to specifically design some kind of lamp based on this, what would be the ideal shape to maximize the emitted useful light for a given volume.
genewitch 4y ago
it emits 520nm but requires 200-350nm to activate. So the outside glowing probably won't affect the inside much, if at all.

dekhn 4y ago

only the surface of a bottle of this kind will emit photons. The emission frequency and intensity is not enough to really make this propagate light significantly. Instead, you would suspend a tiny amount of this in a volume of transparent resin.

at_a_remove 4y ago
Being kind of a maniac for glow in the dark stuff, this isn't quite true. I've filled up flask bottles with glow gravel of this variety and, after a "charge," poured it out -- the interior gravel did indeed get charged. I think you would need much more thickness than a centimeter or two for the interiors not to get charged up. (Yes, I had a bunch of bottles filled up and arranged on a rope so they would glow softly during the night because I'm weird like that)
- pengaru 4y ago
  Since you seem to have done some experiments, what effect does increasing the bottle size have on the glow? Duration or brightness changed? No visible effect?
  - at_a_remove 4y ago
    You max out pretty fast. Most people don't understand the incredibly wide (over so many orders of magnitude) ranges our eyes (and ears) function over. Once you're in the dark, the glow is quite visible but it wouldn't have been very notable before. And so the absorb-release cycle can penetrate rather rapidly. If I had to guess, with the gravel, that would die off at maybe a few centimeters of depth. Essentially, you're getting just surface area at a given brightness, despite the interior gravel getting charged. With the zinc sulfides, they really did take much longer to hit their max charge, although I never measured it.
    - batch12 4y ago
      > Most people don't understand the incredibly wide (over so many orders of magnitude) ranges our eyes (and ears) function over. For sure. Last year while walking through the woods on a cloudy, new moon, 3am morning I saw a green light piercing through the trees. It was difficult to find because it was over a hundred feet away. Once I reached it, I found a single green LED. It wasn't an ultra-bright variant or anything-- just a normal LED attached to a camera.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      I wonder, if one were to specifically design some kind of lamp based on this, what would be the ideal shape to maximize the emitted useful light for a given volume.

genewitch 4y ago

it emits 520nm but requires 200-350nm to activate. So the outside glowing probably won't affect the inside much, if at all.