[HN Gopher] Making glow-in-the-dark Strontium Aluminate
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Making glow-in-the-dark Strontium Aluminate
Author : LorenDB
Score : 75 points
Date : 2025-01-19 13:30 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (maurycyz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (maurycyz.com)
| jawns wrote:
| When my kids were little, we had glow in the dark pacifiers that
| lasted ALL NIGHT. I still don't know what sorcery was used to
| accomplish that, but if any of you have little ones, the MAM
| brand is what we used. Being able to spot the pacifier in the
| crib at 5am was a huge help some nights.
|
| And now my kids each have an extra eyeball, which has proven very
| useful indeed.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I have a tritium keychain that makes it delightfully easy to
| find my dropped keys in the dark garage.
|
| And some GMO petunias that glow 24/7.
| https://www.instagram.com/p/C8_Dgqvuq2C/
| xattt wrote:
| Tritium-lit pacifiers sure sound like a legitimate 1950s
| atomic age product.
| pfdietz wrote:
| There's a youtube channel from someone who finds and
| reports frivolous radioactive products to the NRC, getting
| them banned. It happens even today.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BA5bw1EV5I
| mrgaro wrote:
| Not sure what the modern one are, but they will still glow
| in the morning hours. They are very very handy!
| swayvil wrote:
| Looking for seed. Only seeing little plants (which ship
| terribly and cost way too much). Petunias are dead easy to
| grow from seed.
| pentamassiv wrote:
| Not the Firefly petunia. They were engineered to not grow
| from a seed so they don't accidentally spread
| swayvil wrote:
| So they make infertile seeds. Well fudge.
|
| So cuttings or roots or whatever
|
| EDIT
|
| according to google they can be grown from seed. So
| experimentation is called for
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Petunias don't breed true, but people have gotten viable
| glowing seedlings from them.
|
| Might be a mess in 10-20 years when some inevitably
| escape.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| We had one in a pot with another plant and it got out-
| competed hard. I doubt it'll be an issue. It's not like
| glowing is an evolutionary advantage.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| Exactly. When's the last time you've seen normal petunias
| being invasive.
|
| Firefly petunias need a _lot_ of light. The entire plant
| (roots too) are literally burning precious energy 24 /7
| for the glowing. There seems to be a direct correlation
| between the light they receive and how long the
| internodes are from what I've seen putting them under
| grow lights. More light, shorter internodes.
|
| Here in the Pacific Northwest various worm (caterpillar)
| larvae also love shredding them and eating through seed
| pods, and they are susceptible to downy mildew complexes
| which seem to become persistent within the plant.
|
| They also are finicky about warmth, water and fertilizer.
|
| They are a princess of a plant, not the next kochia or
| pigweed.
|
| Honestly it would be more viable to take invasive weeds
| and hamper them by introducing glow genes.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'm not surprised they don't do that well in the PNW.
| It's nothing like their home range.
|
| Florida might be another story. I can't imagine we have
| much research on the benefits of glowing plants in the
| wild, either.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| This is outright not true, and I'm not sure where this
| rumor came from.
|
| Source: I have firefly petunias, I have seeds from hand
| pollenating them, and I have volunteer plants growing in
| the pot from seed I didn't collect.
|
| They are simply not guaranteed to glow because they don't
| breed true. 3 out of my 5 volunteer plants glow.
|
| Light Bio is actually pleasantly realistic in how
| amenable they are to _non-commercial_ breeding. I may
| have even seen pollination instructions on their
| instagram (normally certain moths pollenate petunias, and
| without those you need to do so by hand yo be sure seeds
| take)
|
| You can see some crossbreeding results in
| https://old.reddit.com/r/FireflyPetunia/
| gus_massa wrote:
| We had a pacifier chain shapped like an elphant head that
| included a hidden rattle. It's very useful to find it when it's
| indide the sheets or cloths.
| the8472 wrote:
| Would Strontium-90 make it glow ~permanently?
| ur-whale wrote:
| > permanently
|
| Depends on your definition of "permanent"
|
| With enough Strontium-90 involved, that might not be very long
| indeed.
| evilduck wrote:
| "glows for your entire lifetime"
| pfdietz wrote:
| Teach a man to glow...
| GravitasFailure wrote:
| Huh, it very well might. 90Sr is a beta emitter, which should
| excite phosphorescent materials nicely. Even better, it decays
| into Yttrium 90, and Yttrium Aluminate is also phosphorescent
| (it's also the YA in YAG lasers). Anyone have some spare 90Sr
| we can test this with?
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| Also allow the baby to read minds and see through walls - that
| triggered a burst of nostalgia for the comic Strontium Dog:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium_Dog
| swayvil wrote:
| Hey I bought this stuff on amaz. It's good. Made glow plastic
| (mix with epoxy), glow goo (mix with water gel)
| dekhn wrote:
| Yeah, I've used this- I CNC shapes into plastic, then backfill
| with glow-epoxy. It works incredibly well with a UV lamp.
| lightedman wrote:
| Hey, I mine the stuff needed to make this stuff, but it sits as
| display pieces in my fluorescent cases.
|
| 34.7576, -116.2790
|
| Lots of agate in the area, too.
| latchkey wrote:
| Woah, two weeks ago, I just randomly boondocked a few miles
| directly south from there.
| lightedman wrote:
| So Pisgah or Lavic or Amboy. All great places to escape.
| latchkey wrote:
| Little bit further... 34deg09'54.6"N 116deg12'57.0"W
|
| Was heading through JTree...
| code_duck wrote:
| Pretty interesting. I knew someone years ago who made batches of
| borosilicate glass with this stuff. It's difficult to work,
| unfortunately. The glow effect fades if you work it too much. I
| still have a bunch of his glow glass.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| The combination of green glow and strontium somehow sounds very
| radioactive, even though I assume it's not a radioactive isotope
| they're using here
| f1shy wrote:
| A video about it:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SIWcvudEPVA&pp=ygUTc3Ryb250aXV...
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