High Visibility Jerkins

[fly258]

What is it that makes them so "highly visible"?

Why do they look so bright?

[magicdice]

i'm not entirely sure what jerkins means (yeah yeah, kids these days etc) but i'm guessing you mean those waistcoat things

they're made of little reflective particles, so that any light shined on them is reflected directly back into your eye (lots hence many diff angles of incidence & reflection so some will get you directly) so the net effect is as it would be were you to look directly into the light source.

[fly258]

magic dice,

I'm not refering to the reflective strips on a high vis jacket but the yellowy geen colour. What makes it appear so bright in daylight?

[Rabelais]

If you are talking about fluorescent jackets it will be because they fluoresce. Meaning they adsorb light at one frequency and pump it out at another. Like the bluey whitener in your washing powder adsorbs UV light and fluoresces in the visible spectrum.

[slimfandango]

It's just the way they react with the vinegar in the jar. The same thing happens with pickled onions, if you look at them after they've been in the jar for ages they also develop a kind of highly-visible glow. Not sure why you would want to know this mind you, but keep asking..

[fly258]

Ha bluddy Ha :)

[Hippy]

Rabelais got it. The popular trade name for this stuff is "da-glo" that is, it glows in the daylight. It actually "reflects" more light than we expect and so is eye catching and bright by converting Ultra-Violet light, normally invisible to our eyes, into visible light.

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