Glow Sticks

Glow Sticks
Bring some color into the dark with glow sticks! We have come to use glow sticks as party favors, in ‘raves’, as bracelets, around glasses, necklaces, headbands, and so much more. However, there is a chemistry behind it and I took a look further into it. The glow stick contains a chemical mixed in it’s glass vial, along with a fluorescent dye to give it it’s color. As well as another chemical in it’s plastic tube. The chemical that is within the glass vial is Diphenyl Oxalate- which is: C14H10O4 and is a solid ester with oxidation products that are responsible for the chemiluminescence of the glow stick. The plastic tube contains the chemical of Hydrogen Peroxide- which is 2(HO) and is the most simple peroxide and an oxidizer that is a clear liquid. A chemical reaction takes place when the peroxide is mixed with the phenyl oxalate ester, that yields two molecules of phenol and one molecule of peroxyacid ester. The peroxyacid with turn into carbon dioxide once it decomposes spontaneously to release the energy that excites the dye which will then soon relax by releasing a photon, in more easy to understand words, it’d be releasing the glow. The wavelength of the glow (the color emitted) depends on the structure of the dye that was used. By adjusting the concentrations of the two reacting chemicals, the manufactures can produce either a glow stick that glows brightly for a short amount of time or a glow stick that grows more dim but for a longer amount of time. Then as time passes, the color and emission does too, and slowly the glow stick will “die”. The life of the glow stick: The plastic tube with a glass vial inside, a chemical between the vial and tube, a chemical within the vial and the dye, then when we bend the glow stick-breaking the glass vial-the chemicals react, the photon is emitted, then the glow stick lives it’s life in a portion of our lives, and then sadly enough-like all living things- it dies and fades.

Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_stick#Chemistry