How to make a Glow Stick

See Also: Illumination

Ingredients
2 liters distilled water
50 milliliters hydrogen peroxide (3% concentration)
0.2 gram luminol
4 grams sodium carbonate
0.4 gram copper sulfate pentahydrate
0.5 gram ammonium carbonate

In medium sized glass mixing bowl, add the hydrogen peroxide to 1 liter of water.

In another bowl dissolve the luminol, sodium carbonate, copper sulfate and ammonium carbonate in the second liter of water.

Lay out a few sealable, clear containers - test tubes with stoppers or Nalgene bottles are good.

Pour in equal measures of each solution - and watch with glee as it lights up.

The hydrogen peroxide solution oxidizes the luminol, producing 3-aminophthalic acid. As it's electrons settle to a more sedate quantum state, they emit photons at wavelengths between 430 and 470 nanometers -- purplish blue.

Illumination is everywhere, simply step outside, the sun, the stars, the moon, the street lamps on that corner you pass everyday on your way to work.

The houses, when you look in, and see all sorts of things. Love, happiness, Sadness, misery, depression, all mixes and swirls of emotions in the light.

What would the world be like without illumination? Empty and dark? One fifth of our world would disappear from us in the click of a light switch. And incomplete place.
Yet without reliance on what we see, we would learn to trust other things to tell us of this place. What we hear, smell, touch, and what we learn and know about the things around us.

We would judge others, not by what we see, but what we know of them. There is no more beauty of the face, but now beauty of the soul for everyone to experience. There are no snap judgments made based off of visible imagery. This world would be a better place.

But in reality, there is no knowledge, no world without illumination, because knowledge really is a different form of light. It's a light in your heart and soul, that tells you what is right, what is wrong, why you love and why you hurt.

Bring light to your life. See from the inside like it was dark, take a look at someone you may have judged on sight, and perceive them as if you could not see them, with anything else but your soul and your heart.

And to everyone else, be sure to glow, so that they may be illuminated by your light as well.