glow in the dark and fluorescent

[CiderMonkey]

are glow in the dark and fluorescent different things. What is the difference?

[kempie]

There are different forms of photoluminescence, which includes fluorescence, but "glow in the dark" is more accurately attributable to phosphorescence.

[Hamish]

"glow in the dark" is a result of either phosphoecence or chemi-lumonescence. These are long lived processes. Fluorescence is a short lived process (usually less than a few hundred nanoseconds in half life) - ie there is not enought time after tunring the light off to notice an emission (without special equipment!). The two processes - phosphoecence and fluorecsence occour through similar excitations emission paths, however the former is not 'allowed' quantum mechanically and therefore a metta stable state exists wich results in the long lifetime. Chem lumin is slightly more complicated - its what goes on in "glow sticks". Sorry it got a bit complicated, but I thought I would get it all down.

[CiderMonkey]

yes, Hamish, it's a bit hard to follow! Any way to explain it in laymans terms??

[spaced]

"glow in the dark" glows in the dark after being subjected to light. Flourescent things are highly visble depending on the light shone upon them

[Hamish]

Phosphorescence - 'glow in the dark' a long lived emission process - Light is absorbed and re-emitted over a few microseconds to minutes.

Fluorescence - a similar, but quicker process wich is not 'long lived' enough to be seen visually after you turned the light out.

(I could expain in more detail and simply if I could draw you some pics!) Hope this helps. Kempie is right, just beat me to it!

[CiderMonkey]

ok, i get it now, thanks for your answers!