by: Ron Perkins
Ultraviolet detecting beads contain pigments that change color when exposed to ultraviolet light from the sun or certain other UV sources. The electromagnetic radiation needed to affect change is between 360 and 300 nm in wavelength. This includes the high-energy part of UV Type A (400-320 nm) and the low energy part of UV Type B (320-280 nm). Long wave fluorescent type black lights work well; incandescent black lights and UV-C lamps will not change the color of the beads.
The dye molecules consist of two large, planar, conjugated systems that are orthogonal to one another. No resonance occurs between two orthogonal parts of a molecule. Imagine two planes at right angles to one another, connected by a carbon atom. When high energy UV light excites the central carbon atom, the two smaller planar conjugated parts form one large conjugated planar molecule. Initially neither of the two planar conjugated parts of the molecule is large enough to absorb visible light and the dye remains colorless. When excited with UV radiation, the resulting larger planar conjugated molecule absorbs certain wavelengths of visible light resulting in a color. The longer is the conjugated chain; the longer the wavelength of light absorbed by the molecule. By changing the size of the two conjugated sections of the molecule, different dye colors can be produced. Heat from the surroundings provides the activation energy needed to return the planar form of the molecule back to its lower energy orthogonal colorless structure.
Although UV light is needed to excite the molecule to form the high-energy planar structure, heat from the surroundings provides the activation energy to change the molecule back to its colorless structure. If colored beads are placed in liquid nitrogen, they will not have enough activation energy to return to the colorless form.
The UV detecting beads remain one of the least expensive qualitative UV detectors available today. They cycle back and forth thousands of times.
That is a bit of science that I love. Protecting oneself from UV is important to me. UV detecting beads remain one of the least expensive qualitative UV detectors available today and that’s how I like them, cheap.
Enjoyed every bit of your article post. Thank you!
how can I measure the colour changing in a way of Mathematic
?
I want to measure the change of the colour
I did this by taking pictures of the reacted beads and using Microsoft Paint’s “color picker” tool to get a “Lum” (luminosity) value for each bead. This gives you a number between 0 and 240, with a higher value meaning the bead is closer to white.
Hi Ron,
Thank you for this post!
What are the names of the reacting chemicals?
Thank you in advance!
Nina