And sometimes, the color of the light that comes out depends on the gases surrounding the crystal, but sometimes it doesn't. But some crystals shine when they're fractured instead of completely broken, and others shine when they're stretched or squeezed. If you take one into a dark bathroom and bite down on it, crushing the sugar crystals inside, you can often see a little flash of blue light in the mirror. The most famous kind of triboluminescence is from Wint O Green Lifesavers. And if that definition sounds pretty wishy-washy to you, that's honestly because it /is/. Triboluminescence, also called mechanoluminescence, is the release of some sort of light from some sort of crystal because of some sort of physical stress. Although they can't quite agree why it happens in the first place. And modern scientists are researching ways of working stuff that glows like this into all sorts of futuristic devices. Today, we know that his sugar wasn't special tons of different crystals shine under stress like, those minty Lifesavers candies that spark blue when you chew them. This non-sequitur is the first documentation of a phenomenon we now call triboluminescence. And in that book he somehow found the time to mention that sugar emits light when you crush it.
In 1620, Francis Bacon wrote a book arguing that scientists should trust experiments instead of old philosophers. Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet? Ashmore, charles george, Kevin Bealer, Chris Peters Noe, Piya Shedden, KatieMarie Magnone, Scott Satovsky Jr, Charles Southerland, Patrick D.
#Lifesavers spark in the dark free#
Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever:Īdam Brainard, Greg, Alex Hackman, Sam Lutfi, D.A. Support SciShow by becoming a patron on Patreon: SciShow has a spinoff podcast! It's called SciShow Tangents. What you might not know is that this is an example of triboluminescence: a fascinating, somewhat mysterious, and potentially lifesaving scientific phenomenon! You might know that if you chomp on a Wint-O-Green Lifesaver in a dark room, you can see little blue flashes of light in your mouth.
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