How do you make the stuff in 'glow sticks' glow?

Question

You bend and crack it, then it glows. How?

Answer 1

oxygen and luceferin , that's how glow bugs do it, and i go to the dollar store and buy them and cut them open and sprinkle drops by flinging the tube around and on the ceiling and walls at night so it looks like stars [ but don't get it in your eye it stings [ the label says non toxic but it still stings].

Answer 2

The stuff in glow sticks is similar to the chemicals in fireflies (lightning bugs, glow worms) which one answerer mentioned. The chemicals were first publicly announced at the New York World’s Fair in 1963 or 64, by DuPont, who discovered the principle. The DuPont company learned how to duplicate it outside of living things, but I think it was a while before they came up with commercial applications for it (the light sticks.)

It is not luminescent in the same way as one answerer mentioned, they do not charge up from being exposed to the light. It is due to a chemical reaction, and when the chemicals are done reacting (like your soda running out of fizz) it will not glow any more, no matter what you do to it.

The other answerer who mentioned sunlight from hydrogen fusion is also wrong. Solar fusion is a nuclear process, not a chemical process. When molecules combine, that is chemistry, not fusion. I hope this will help you not to be confused.

24 DEC 06, 0312 hrs, GMT.

Answer 3

Put it next to a light for a minute then turn off the light so that it is pitch black and watch the thing glow!

Answer 4

this is the subject that large companies do no longer want you to know. i does no longer want you to purpose it, yet you will locate out if this is poisonous. you positioned the object in cleansing soap, after which you put in a sprint of windex. If the object is poisonous, the object will turn green. it works too. yet no, the well known-day ones at the instant are not risky, (non-poisonous. Emphasis on non!) however the previous glowsticks are very poisonous and could kill you.

Answer 5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glowsticks

Check it out. It's a simple chemical reaction - molecules fuse together and emit energy (light) in the process, kind of like how we get sunlight from hydrogen fusion.

Answer 6

they have phosphorus

which have tendency to glow when it contacts with air....
when they break the stick air flows in the stick n they glow

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glowsticks

Answer 7

I dont know the specifics but its just two chemicals that blend when the tube breaks

Answer 8

chemical reaction

Answer 9

idk