Glo-Sticks

Yeah, those ever so fun glo-sticks, that you put around your wrist and neck, when you go clubing, or when it's CA day in the capital....not so fun when it get in your EYE!

I didn't know if it was non-toxic or not, and I made every one call poison controle, while i washed my eye out with water. It really stings. I mean it's CHEMICALS REACTING IN YOUR EYE releasing energy (in the form of light) but do you know what chemicals? cause i don't.

I looked them up on ask jeeves just now.


"The mechanism that he and other researchers have proposed for the process still stands as the best candidate: The oxalate ester and H2O2 react with the help of a salicylate catalyst to form a peroxyacid ester and phenol. The peroxyacid ester decomposes to form more phenol, and most important, a highly energetic intermediate, presumed to be a four-membered ring dimer of CO2. As the cyclic dimer decomposes into two CO2 molecules, it gives up its energy to a waiting dye molecule, which then fluoresces."

"The group went searching for fluorescing dyes to make different colors. For example, the common green in most light sticks comes from 9,10-bis(phenylethynyl)anthracene, and 9,10-diphenylanthracene gives blue."

"Reds and blues are typically the most difficult to produce, Cranor says. Purple, made from a combination of three dyes, is the most intractable color of all. "Green and yellow," he notes, "are a piece of cake."

http://www.cem.msu.edu/~cem333/CENLightSticks.html
-visted on dated this blog was posted.
-site last updated in 1999 by the American Chemical Society

You can also visit the site to see a diagram of the actual chemical reaction