# Glow powder glows under pressure?



## Pydpiper (Dec 30, 2005)

I was doing my weekly stripdown-clean-lubricate to my lights when I decided the glowpowder ring I put on was ready to come off.
I use Glow Inc's green powder with clear nail polish to put a "ring" around the heads of some of my lights, in this case a KL4 and KL1, they are both daily carries and take a beating. 
I was using a small screwdriver to carefully scrape the glow powder off, and I noticed every time I really put pressure to it it would glow, and glow bright! The ring is thick, probally a millimeter or two, I had the head forced to the floor for leverage and was going at it pretty good, at first I thought I was just exposing cleaner powder below the surface and that was the logic, but that is not the case, every gouge of the screwdriver would cause the powder to light up for as long as it was under pressure. I can think of no logical explanation for this, yet I am absolutly certain it was happening..
Any thoughts?


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## WildRice (Dec 30, 2005)

no science degree, but this sounds good.


Glow powder energy is stored at the atomic level, and released over time. If another variation on energy is applied (heat, pressure, sound (pressure)), it will change the decay cycle of the glow atoms, causing them to release their stored energy more quickly.

Not sure, but it makes sence to me.

Jeff


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## Morelite (Dec 30, 2005)

It is true, I had some leftover epoxy & green power mix. It was a hard disc shaped piece about the size of a quarter, I flexed it and it glowed where it was bending and then broke. I tried each piece till to peices where to small to bend with my fingers and the results where always the same, they glowed bright while i was bending/breaking them.


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## greenLED (Dec 30, 2005)

Since you brought it up: 
I've also noticed dry GID paint glows when heated. Skylighter's finding an explanation for me. I noticed this while fixing the LED tailcap on my GL3. Haven't tried squishing GID powder by itself.


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## Pydpiper (Dec 30, 2005)

Ok, so we established that I am not crazy, at least for now..  
I'll buy Jeffs explanation, the atomic stuff..

It may be heat related as well, like Green says, heat would be generated by bending or scraping..

I feel another microwave experiment coming..


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## Mike Painter (Dec 30, 2005)

Pydpiper said:


> I feel another microwave experiment coming..



Use a CD this time.

The cat still won't go near the kitchen.


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## greenLED (Dec 30, 2005)

Pydpiper said:


> I feel another microwave experiment coming..




:yeah!!:


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## IsaacHayes (Dec 30, 2005)

Hahah cat won't go near the kitchen. Well at least it keeps it off of the counters!

Yes heat and pressure(which generates heat) will cause it to glow. When sanding down epoxy glow tabs I found this out. Also I can take my epoxy tabs and run them over hot water and they glow really bright. Even brighter if you "precharge" them with a little light.

Can't wait to hear if the microwave makes them glow!!!


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## Pydpiper (Dec 30, 2005)

The shavings in the microwave alone yeilded no results, just my wife rolling her eys and asking if she needed to bring the kids outside..
Later, or tomorrow I will bring them to my shop microwave and see how they react with some metal shavings..
then a cd.


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## kelmo (Dec 30, 2005)

The compound absorbs energy by increasing the distance that the electrons orbit their respective nucleii. This inputted energy can be in the form of mechanical energy (pressure), heat, or radiant energy (light both visible or non-visible). When the electrons return to there natural state or ground state, the released excess energy is expressed in the form from this particular compound as photons in the visible light spectrum. 

Either that or the Glow Gods are angry!!!

On a more serious note, I read somewhere that this stuff is a Strontium compound. Are you sure this stuff is not radioactive? Strontium is a calcium analog and your body will absorb and use this stuff as calcium. Short story is it will concentrate in the bones and irradiate your body, particularly the bone marrow with beta radiation. Not a good thing.


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## David_Campen (Dec 30, 2005)

> Are you sure this stuff is not radioactive? Strontium is a calcium analog and your body will absorb and use this stuff as calcium. Short story is it will concentrate in the bones and irradiate your body, particularly the bone marrow with beta radiation. Not a good thing.


The strontium in the glow powder will not be radioactive. The element strontium occurs naturally in nature and the isotopes of the naturally occuring material are not radioactive. Radioactive isotopes of strontium are obtained from man made nuclear reactions.


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## jkuo13 (Dec 30, 2005)

kelmo said:


> The compound absorbs energy by increasing the distance that the electrons orbit their respective nucleii. This inputted energy can be in the form of mechanical energy (pressure), heat, or radiant energy (light both visible or non-visible).



Hmmm... interesting. I wonder if vibrations from a painted speaker would be enough to get it to glow. I'd try painting a subwoofer, but I think my housemate would probably kill me since it is his speaker setup.


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## HammerSandwich (Dec 31, 2005)

You folks will want to read this.


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## Lunarmodule (Dec 31, 2005)

*WAY TO GO HAMMERSANDWICH !!!! 

*Straight from the Chicago Reader, the ORIGINAL and BEST

answers for EVERYTHING , Mr. Cecil has em folks!


THAT is perfect, everybody should click that link

makes me think of an idea for an emergency light:

Wintergreen LifeSavers and a pill crusher modded with a Fraen optic!


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## Amonra (Dec 31, 2005)

i have tried crushing the raw glow powder with no results, however it does glow faintly when heated but nowhere near the glow it produces when charged with light. maybe it has something to do with the powder/nailpolish mix ?


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## greenLED (Dec 31, 2005)

I'm using Glowinc's GID paint, not the powder+nailpolish combo; and it glows as bright (if not more than) as I've ever seen it after charging with light. How much did you heat it?


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## yuandrew (Dec 31, 2005)

Pydpiper, what about heating it on the stove ? (use an old skillet)

Or place some in a pie dish and float it in a pot of boiling water.


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## Pydpiper (Jan 2, 2006)

After a weekend of new years festivities I decided it would be safest to wait till today before performing any experiments..
Tonight I will bring some out to the shop and try some traditional heat, pie plate and torches..


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## nerdgineer (Jan 2, 2006)

There are lots of materials that will glow weakly when physically stressed. Scotch tape glows when it is pulled off the roll. Go somewhere dark, let your eyes get dark adjusted, and you will see it. Wintergreen Lifesavers will glow when crushed by your teeth, and so on.

So it's no suprise that glow powder will glow brightly when compressed.


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## Bradlee (Jan 2, 2006)

nerdgineer said:


> Scotch tape glows when it is pulled off the roll. Go somewhere dark, let your eyes get dark adjusted, and you will see it.



:wow: it really works!


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## Robban (Jan 2, 2006)

nerdgineer said:


> There are lots of materials that will glow weakly when physically stressed. Scotch tape glows when it is pulled off the roll. Go somewhere dark, let your eyes get dark adjusted, and you will see it. Wintergreen Lifesavers will glow when crushed by your teeth, and so on.
> 
> So it's no suprise that glow powder will glow brightly when compressed.


Another one is the glue on envelopes. If you rip it off aggresively it will glow blue/purple quite strongly.

I also think sugarcubes give off a little bit of light when crushed.


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## Kevlarman (Jan 4, 2006)

Triboluminescence!


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## greenLED (Jan 4, 2006)

curious, but how does that explain the GID glowing under pressure?


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## Pydpiper (Jan 6, 2006)

I applied my mixture to a piece of tin, then slowly applied heat. The powder did not glow, it simply turned a darker color and smoked. (I was prepared for the smoke). That was a useless test.. 
I am still amazed at how well that powder/polish mixture endured my pockets/work/abuse. It stayed bright all night right till the end.


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## Cornkid (Jan 6, 2006)

"The shavings in the microwave alone yeilded no results, just my wife rolling her eys and asking if she needed to bring the kids outside..
"

"asking if she needed to bring the kids outside"
LOL

Pydpiper.. That is funny! My parents would probably kill me if I even thought of doing something interesting... Its' sad, I haven't been able to keep up with my monthly exothermic reaction... 

-tom


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## Pydpiper (Jan 6, 2006)

This isn't in my kitchen..  I have a mirowave in my shop, it serves no purpose outside of sheer entertainment value..


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## Navck (Jan 6, 2006)

Needs... O-Ring... Bezel.. Squish.
Okay, we have a NEW way to charge these things


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## Kram (Jan 8, 2006)

It's interesting that this discussion continues. I suspect a lot of you find this as fascinating as I do. The explanation given by Wildrice early in the thread is correct. I tried putting part of a disk of glow powder/epoxy mix under a hot water spigot and observed that the section being heated glowed more brightly as it warmed up. It got me to thinking about the mechanism. 

The electrons in the strontium aluminate are raised to a higher level of excitement by the impact of (generally high-energy) photons. The "orbits" of the electrons then randomly decay over time and when that happens, photons are emitted (the glow we see). Raising the temperature of the atoms increases the probability of decay, so in the aggregate, more photons are released (the brighter glow in the presence of heat). If this explanation is correct, then when the material returns to "normal" temperature, I would expect it to glow less bright than it would have if allowed to give up it's energy at a more uniform pace (i.e. more of the atoms gave up their excitation - the stored light energy - during the heating phase).

I decided to test this. I took my glow powder/epoxy disk and dunked half of it into a sink of hot water. Sure enough, that half glowed more brightly. Then I took it out and laid it on the counter and waited. As expected, once the heated half cooled, it was less bright than the half that had not been heated.

The heat is apparently making the material give up its light more quickly rather than adding more stored light energy. That also could explain the pressure phenomenon that was described at the beginning of the thread. Pressure on something almost always results in heating. The same goes for deformation of the material (did you ever bend a wire back and forth a number of times and feel the heated result?).

Mark


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## Skylighter (Jan 9, 2006)

Hey Guys, I just wanted to point out that we put a sale up in the Manufacturer area. Link is:

Glow Inc. Sale

[Note to moderators: I will delete this post in a few days]


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