Getting UV light from a blackbody radiator? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2019, 06:17:39 pm
content: Postulate this: If a tungsten light bulb filament gives off black body radiation how do they make black light bulbs (the woods glass type) and "halogen" lights that give off UV? The UV catastrophe problem says that you can't do that. I have a feeling "black light" may not be UV but rather extreme purple that our eyes can't see, but its still color light right before the photon has enough keV to ionize. This would be the same trick in woods glass fluorescent black light tubes, as the envelope would have to be quartz to let out UV, or does silica glass pass UVA just fine? Wouldn't the best black light be a fluorescent quartz glass tube with a UVB/C filter that also cuts most of the shorter UVA wave lengths?Fun Story, my bed room as a kid had four 4' black lights on the edge of the ceiling with tin foil reflectors on the wall. The room looked normal day or night, but when you turned on the black lights you could see the walls were painted in laundry detergent antifreeze, dilute highlighters, and some other toxic chemicals that look clear under normal light. We used to give our friends way too many hits of LSD or mushrooms bring them in the room they saw many times in ordinary light, then turn on the black lights and watch their minds explode!!! Wish I had pictures film cameras didn't show that stuff well or rather not easily like a digital camera would.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2019, 07:00:51 pm
content: The simple answer is that "woods lamps" are not incandescent at all. They are gas discharge lamps with an integrated incandescent ballast.See video here:https://youtu.be/aBrLeOVBCaE?t=4m0s

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2019, 07:28:03 pm
content: No, there really are incandescent blacklight bulbs using wood’s glass. I had one as a kid.They work, they’re just ferociously inefficient, since less than 0.1% of the energy is UV.Seehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklight#Incandescent

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2019, 07:54:41 pm
content: Incandescent lamps do emit a tiny amount of UV. The higher the filament temperature, the more UV they'll emit, at the expense of a shorter life.Ordinary glass passes UVA pretty well. It just blocks the shorter UVB and UVC wavelengths, which is good for protecting the eyes and skin.The shorter visible wavelengths, blue, indigo and violet, cause fluorescence at longer wavelengths: green, yellow, orange and red. In fact the longer end of the visible spectrum will excite fluorescence to some degree but it will be infrared.Digital cameras respond poorly to UV but I don't know how they compare to colour film. Old back and white film will respond in the UV but camera lenses filter it out.The mid to lower end of the UV spectrum, is not ionising. Incandescent lamps do not emit and ionising radiation.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation#Definition_boundary_for_lower-energy_photons

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2019, 09:47:12 pm
content: Agree. Those cheap tungsten UV lights run hot and live short lives. Produce little UV. And usually have some sort of filter to block the IR and visible which is produced in far greater quantities. It would be interesting to know if this is some sort of absorption filter or a cheaply produced interference filter. My bet is for the absorption type.Remember, while there is a peak wavelength for each temperature of emitter, and the reduction in intensity beyond the peak is why the UV catastrophe doesn't occur, there is no wavelength that has zero output, no matter what the temperature. You just have to use lots of zeros to describe it.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2019, 09:58:38 pm
content: Yeah, the UV side of the curve drops off exponentially, or something like that. So there's a nonzero chance of, say, receiving a 1keV photon from room-temperature material..... it's just "impossible" (10^-100 likelihood, say).Tim

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 05, 2019, 10:00:19 pm
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on January 05, 2019, 09:47:12 pmThey use Wood's glass, which passes infrared, UVA and some violet and a tiny amount of far red.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood%27s_glasshttps://www.uqgoptics.com/materials_filters_schott_uvTransmitting_UG1.aspx

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2019, 11:12:21 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on January 05, 2019, 10:00:19 pmI thought you were Hero999 not Zero999 Did you change it while I was on holiday? Or am I losing my mind?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 06, 2019, 07:28:34 pm
content: Yes, I changed it while you were away around Christmas time.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 01:47:16 am
content: From Hero to Zero ...

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 09:17:58 am
content: Quote from: Brumby on January 07, 2019, 01:47:16 amQuagmire:"Hey lady, why don't you ditch the zero and go home with a hero?" He then gets punched in the face."Alright!"I'm glad someone noticed I was gone, I bet people were like "Ahhhhh, so nice and quiet here, no stupid questions or repetitive posts followed by apologies and excuses."Zero99 is a cooler name I think.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 07, 2019, 10:39:00 am
content: Yes, I thought Hero was a bit narcissistic. I can't remember why I chose it in the first place. I've been unhappy with it for awhile, but stuck with it because I didn't know it could be changed without closing my old account and opening a new one. Recently, I learned it's possible to change my name, with the permission of a moderator, so I did.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 10, 2019, 11:01:19 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on January 07, 2019, 10:39:00 amIf only doing it in real life was that easy. Its actually easier to change your gender on your birth cert. then your name. It depends on the sate but you don't even need documentation from your doctor, you just say "I identify as this sex now" and they change it. Which is great because some people live as females but don't want to have surgery, like myself. Has nothing to do with the state you currently reside in. So if you were born in some shithole state like Mississippi, you can move away but will always be affected by its laws. Of course you could always delete your account in real life and create a new one but that only works if you are Buddhist.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 09:54:56 pm
content: A good example of an incandescent lamp that emits UV is the sun (which has an equivalent black body temperature of 5778 K)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiationThe black line represents what classical mechanics intuitively would predict, which obviously didn't agree with measurements. That problem was called the UV catastrophe.The solution was to make some, for the time, rather strange assumptions. They were the first clue to modern quantum physics and thus are very important historically. Those assumptions give a so called black body radiation spectra which agrees perfectly with measurements. The other lines show black body radiation spectra for different temperatures. As can be seen in this graph that means there is a fair amount of UV from the sun (most of which is blocked by the ozone layer).

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 10:18:20 pm
content: This is an example of the type of lamp I was talking about:http://pen-ray.uvp.com/highintensitylamps.htmlIt is a 90 W lamp, with an irradiance of 8500 uW/cm2at 2 inches. It is a gas-discharge lamp with an incandescent ballast (gas discharge lamps have negative resistance and require ballasts to limit current consumption). The user can tell this immediately, because the UV output doesn't begin until the lamp has been "lit" and warming up for about 30 seconds. The bulb also has a safety cutout to prevent hot striking and so it may shut off during use, which is not true of incandescents.

author: jimdeane
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2019, 10:58:31 pm
content: I actually took a spectrum from a "Black Light Bulb" purchased at Wal-Mart in the US during the halloween season. I wanted to compare it to LED and fluorescent versions. Turns out...not black light at all. Not even trying.I thought I recalled black light incandescent bulbs actually working (causing fluorescence in fabrics, dyes) back in the 1980s. Now this one at least is a huge fake.I'm attaching the spectrum.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2019, 02:03:39 pm
content: Quote from: helius on January 11, 2019, 10:18:20 pmNobody was disputing that gas-discharge UV lamps exist.You claimed that the incandescent UV lamps must be gas discharge, and this claim is demonstrably untrue. Disprovingthisclaim saysnothing whatsoeverabout the existence of gas discharge UV lamps.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2019, 02:06:22 pm
content: Quote from: jimdeane on January 11, 2019, 10:58:31 pmSo it was what, an incandescent heater?Just to be clear, incandescent UV lamps are so unbelievably inefficient at UV that I wouldn‘t be surprised if the ratio of IR to UV from those exceeds the dynamic range of some measurement gear.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2019, 02:57:57 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on January 12, 2019, 02:06:22 pmI agree.Does this one actually cause things to fluoresce?What colour does it appear when lit? No doubt it's cherry red, rather than the usual dim violet glow produced by real black lights, as it emits more in the deep red, than violet end of the spectrum.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2019, 03:20:29 pm
content: Quote from: jimdeane on January 11, 2019, 10:58:31 pmWhy would you plot it on linear axes? The UV component is a few pixels here.Tim

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2019, 05:36:51 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on January 12, 2019, 03:20:29 pmNo doubt it's the default seeting for the software connected to the spectrometer, which might not have a wide enough dynamic range to see the UV as well as the IR.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 12, 2019, 08:12:33 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on January 12, 2019, 02:03:39 pmTooki:I showed you mine—now you show me yours.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2019, 06:48:44 am
content: Quote from: helius on January 12, 2019, 08:12:33 pmWhat are you, 10?!I already linked to evidence in my first reply.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 13, 2019, 09:30:50 am
content: Quote from: helius on January 12, 2019, 08:12:33 pmI presume he doesn't have a crappy blacklight incandescent lamp. No doubt if he has or gets a blacklight, it'll be a fluorescent or LED type.I know blacklight incandescent lamps exist. Maplin used to sell them. I have a blacklight CFL which wasn't that much more expensive and no doubt is 1000 times more efficient. The glass bulb is ordinary, uncoloured glass, coated with a blacklight filter, probably Wood's glass. The only issue is the end of the tube only has a thin layer of filter, so it produces more visible light, than a standard linear blacklight blue fluorescent tube.I have contemplated buying a blacklight incandescent lamp, but only so I can use the glass bulb as a filter for a UV LED, as I couldn't find a cheap Wood's glass filter. In the end I didn't bother, because I'm not confident in my ability to cleanly and safely cut the base off the bulb without breaking it. I thought about trying on an ordinary incandescent lamp to practise, but I've read that Wood's glass is more difficult to work with.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2019, 04:04:01 am
content: More proof of existence. I dug into the bin of bad buys and came up with two brands of incandescent black light bulbs. They were originally purchased (at a second hand shop) in an attempt to come up with a cheap eraser for UVEPROMs. Yeah it was a long time ago. They didn't work. But about the same time I purchased a 6 inch fluorescent tube reputed to be UV. Which wouldn't erase the PROMs either after four hours of exposure. The incandescent bulbs give no visible sign of causing florescence even in a totally dark room, so at least for me these have been a total failure, though I don't doubt for a minute that there is some minute amount of UV emitted.The bulbs are very similar in appearance, but one is marked as made in China, while the other is marked as made in Korea. Since these were purchased before trade relations with China were fully normalized it is possible that they were both made in China, with one having been exported first to Korea before coming to the USA.The photograph of one of them in operation shows clearly that they are not a gas discharge bulb, but a fairly standard tungsten filament type.These bulbs run very hot. My pyrometer shows the top of the bulb at 155 C with the sides running 95 to 100 C. Normal incandescent bulbs measured with the same pyrometer measure about 65 C on the upper surface and 40 C or so on the side. That leaves a potential application for these things as fingerprint removers.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2019, 04:18:59 am
content: By the way, the blues and purples in the operating picture shows that these are at least trying harder than the ones measured by JimDeane.

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2019, 04:44:30 am
content: You have a (qualitative and unreplaceable) spectrophotometer for UV-A in your Mark I eyeballs—exposure to even indirect UV of much intensity (as to cause fluorescence on optically brightened paper and cloth) by the unprotected eyes will cause dryness and irritation from damage to the conjunctiva.This is one reason I am not a fan of blacklight paintings/posters or unshielded UV lamps in public spaces.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2019, 05:52:13 am
content: An interesting thing about incandescent bulbs is that with higher voltage you get higher temps and bluer light but at the expense of lifespan. Voltage is REAL important here as lifespan is related to voltage to the fourth power so even a small change in voltage can make a huge difference in lifespan. OTH, if you ran the bulb below rated voltage it could last a very long time at the expense of light output and color. LED bulbs are way more efficient but the quality of light is not so good. There have been improvements, but getting really high CRI isn't easy or cheap. LED bulbs are now getting fairly cheap if you buy in bulk -- I just bought a 16-pack of 60W 2700K Phiips LED's from Amazon for less than $2/each. What would be nice is a practical LED bulb that you can adjust the color temp from warm (2700K) to about 4000K or even 5000K -- I could see a multi-LED bulb with RGB LED's to accommodate that by varying the ratio of power to each. Probably still need some phosphors an filter coatings to flatten the spectrum.Brian

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2019, 07:18:38 am
content: I'm struggling to see what your post has to do with UV radiation?Anyway, the lamps that can change their color temperature are the Philips "Hue" and equivalents from other brands. They are not cheap, costing at least $30 each for color adjustability.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2019, 09:08:04 am
content: I think he meant: more volts = more UV.Quote from: helius on January 14, 2019, 04:44:30 amUVA blacklights are fairly benign. You get more exposure on a sunny day. I remember trying to give myself a tan with a couple of 8W blacklight blue tubes, when I was a teenager. I put the tubes in a PCB exposure unit and pressed my face against the glass for around five minutes, didn't even close my eyes and didn't suffer any eye problems. Of course I don't recommend this and it was a stupid thing to do.

author: Nerull
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2019, 09:33:56 am
content: Quote from: jimdeane on January 11, 2019, 10:58:31 pmA lot of materials don't need UV to fluoresce. My green laser pointer causes quite a bit of florescence, I would imagine that blue or violet causes even more.If you go outside during the day and look up there's a pretty good example of a blackbody radiator emitting fairly significant amounts of UV up in the sky.

author: jimdeane
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2019, 06:50:39 pm
content: I actually restricted it (in another test) to just wavelengths below 500 nm. It was flatline.

author: jimdeane
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 14, 2019, 06:52:50 pm
content: I haven't looked at trying a log axis on this particular piece of software. UV would be visible as a curve if it existed coming from this bulb, which it doesn't. That's all I cared to find out.

author: jimdeane
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2019, 03:52:49 pm
content: Here's a photo of the "fake black light". It did not make anything fluoresce at all, but it was very hot. To the Mk1 eyeball it did not look as "bright" as this, the camera picked up lots of infrared. It looked deep, deep red, but I think there is a bluish pigment on the bulb so when you look at it it may look purple-ish.My speculation: wood's glass is expensive, they quit using it and went to some generic "dark glass" that unfortunately only lets through deep red. Or someone mixed up "black light" and "heat lamp" at the factory in China.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2019, 04:42:28 pm
content: Quote from: jimdeane on January 15, 2019, 03:52:49 pmIt's probably an infrared lamp designed for use with security camera, rather than a black light. In which case the spectrum certainly makes sense.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2019, 05:38:08 pm
content: JimDeane's "fake" looks identical to the two brands I have. I can't guess at motivation, but clearly it wasn't accident.

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2019, 08:11:44 pm
content: Is it possible it's a 230 V lamp?

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 15, 2019, 09:20:34 pm
content: At least one of mine is clearly marked 120 volts. Given how hot they run on 120 V, I can hardly imagine how hot they would get fed 220 V

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2019, 12:51:47 am
content: Quote from: jimdeane on January 15, 2019, 03:52:49 pmThat doesn't look right. I think the real ones are woods glass with an insanely bright and short life filament inside. Those get dangerously, I remember combing my hair and spec of water touched the bulb and it exploded shooting insanely hot glass that melted the carpet. It did make black light posters glow. I wonder what % is actually UVA. Normal light bulbs are only 1 or 5% light vs IR, the brighter or whiter/bluer the lower that % goes. Is a Low pressure sodium still the most light per watt (ignoring CRI) or have LEDs surpassed this efficiency mark? Problem with LPS is they making things look black and white or orange and white even worse then the high pressure sodium which has almost no color besides that orange peak.Would it be possible to make a true black and white light? Have a light that puts out real sharp spectrums that trick the rods in your eyes. Be a pretty cool effect but only 1 color/black maybe physically possible.How do the green laser pointers make fluorescent paper, except green and blue, fluoresce? The ones that take IR and half it to 532nm work really well as black lights.

author: GeoffreyF
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2019, 07:52:42 pm
content: I don't think you understand what is meant by "Black Body Radiation" or "Black Light". It appears to me you are riffing on "Black" and "Radiation" without understanding either phrase.Rather curious what books or wiki you have read on these subjects. Probably none, but if some, still curious.

author: IanMacdonald
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 02, 2019, 08:40:19 pm
content: Regular halogen capsule bulbs give off some UV, in fact it's not recommended to use them where people can look into them, without a UV filter.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 03, 2019, 12:29:10 am
content: Quote from: Beamin on March 02, 2019, 12:51:47 amI already provided that number in the second reply to this entire thread.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2019, 09:17:08 pm
content: Quote from: GeoffreyF on March 02, 2019, 07:52:42 pmMe? I have first learned of it when studying plank and the UV catastrophe and wave lengths bouncing around in an oven of certain size where no fractional wave lengths exist.I also have used many gas discharge lamps and was able to measure their spectrums to see the peaks. So this I do know a bit about. Probably read most of the wiki pages on quantum physics and even got a little into the math. Why do you say this?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 09, 2019, 10:28:25 pm
content: I imagine a lot of the fluorescence will be due to the shorter visible wavelengths. I remember putting a deep blue plastic box over a linear incandescent lamp as a child to make a poor man's black light. It made lots of red, orange, yellow and green fluorescent materials glow nicely. It wasn't as good as a real black light, as the visible blue interfered with the effect somewhat and it didn't make white paper glow bright blue, but it was good enough at the time.

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2019, 12:02:08 am
content: Quote from: Zero999 on March 09, 2019, 10:28:25 pmHow did that work? I thought fluorescence was higher wavelength usually ones we can't see being absorbed and reflected at longer wave lengths. Really hot bulbs do put out some UV especially halogens that need to be behind glass since they are in a quartz envelope to deal with the heat which is clear to UVAB and I think C. But that's less then 1% of the light and the light is like %5 of the total. So almost nothing. Wouldn't the filter have to be purple like woods glass is? Although I have an insane green laser that will fluoresce neon colored paper. That's IR turned to 530nm so no UV, maybe its the brightness on such a small spot?

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2019, 10:22:52 am
content: Quote from: Beamin on March 10, 2019, 12:02:08 amNo all fluorescent material needs it glow is to be excited by a short enough wavelength, normally shorter than the wavelength it emits. It doesn't have to be UV. Blue light will make plenty of neon objects glow and green will cause yellow, orange and red objects to glow. A classic application of this is white LEDs, which use deep blue or violet light to excite a phosphor which produces the longer visible wavelengths, which combine to make white light. Fluorescence can also occur in the infrared band, excited by visible light.It's also possible for fluorescent materials to emit a shorter wavelength than the incident radiation. Two or more photons in the infrared range can excite a fluorescent material causing emission in the visible spectrum. It only occurs at relatively high intensities, as the second photon has to excite the material, before it has time to fall back to the de-energised state. Infrared laser detector cards, which produce green light from an infrared laser are an example of this.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescencehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photon_upconversion

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2019, 11:38:17 am
content: Quote from: Beamin on March 10, 2019, 12:02:08 amNo, higherfrequency, i.e. shorterwavelength.Quote from: Beamin on March 10, 2019, 12:02:08 amWe can only see the visible spectrum. Both shorter and longer wavelengths — UV and IR, respectively — are invisible to us.Quote from: Beamin on March 10, 2019, 12:02:08 amYes, basically. It's why the incandescent UV bulbs are so unbelievably, insanely inefficient.Quote from: Beamin on March 10, 2019, 12:02:08 amNot just brightness, just that some pigments/dyes will react to visible spectrum, too. It's probably exactly how fluorescent colors work. (I'm no expert in this.)As an aside, just an amusing thing a lot of people don't know: in laundry detergents (except for the special ones for black fabrics), they use optical brighteners, which are literally just dyes that fluoresce blue when exposed to UV, making our clothes glow slightly blue, making them appear bright white! (If you have a UV lamp and a box of powder detergent, the specks of optical brightener glow separately, even!)

author: apis
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2019, 03:09:32 pm
content: That's cool, didn't know there was such a thing as infrared laser detector cards.Might be worth noting that other things can also excite the atoms and cause luminescence, like electricity (neon lights) or chemical processes (fireflies), but then it's not technically fluorescence any more (electroluminecence, chemiluminescence, etc) even though it's basically the same phenomena.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2019, 04:55:05 pm
content: Quote from: apis on March 10, 2019, 03:09:32 pmBack when people still repaired stuff, they were commonly used for verifying the function of the lasers in CD players, and of infrared remote controls.Nowadays, a digital camera will do the trick, since they're fairly sensitive to IR. (Except for SLRs, which tend to have very effective IR filters.)

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 10, 2019, 06:22:46 pm
content: Quote from: apis on March 10, 2019, 03:09:32 pmUp-conversion phosphors cost more than cocaine.https://maxmax.com/shopper/category/9352-infrared-down-conversion-phosphor

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 11, 2019, 05:33:27 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on March 10, 2019, 06:22:46 pmJust how cheap is cocaine in the UK, then?!? Here in Switzerland (Zurich is a MASSIVE coke town) it's about CHF/EUR/US$100 for a gram, admittedly of high quality. So far more than those phosphors! (As for me, I'm not going to snort coke or phosphors!)

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 11, 2019, 09:47:07 pm
content: Quote from: tooki on March 11, 2019, 05:33:27 pmTo be honest, I had no idea coke was that much, so no, probably not more expensive than cocaine.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 12, 2019, 06:27:29 pm
content: Yep. The high cost of powder cocaine is literally why in USA, the cheaper crack cocaine is prevalent in poorer, more melanistic socioeconomic strata, while paler, richer strata tend to use powder. :/Of course, the real question is, is that phosphor cheaper than printer ink?

author: helius
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 12, 2019, 08:15:09 pm
content: "Crack" is made by heating cocaine with baking soda to liberate the alkaloid free base. The byproducts are not separated, so they affect the color and texture.It's not correct that it's somehow a lower grade: basically all cocaine smuggled into the country is the salt form. Crack production is domestic, usually on a kitchen stove, and is done to make the drug smokable.

author: tooki
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 13, 2019, 01:36:38 am
content: I didn't say it was lower grade. (By all means, show me where I said that.) I said it was cheaper. (That means it costs less.) There are significant differences in price (and in mandatory minimum sentences… grrr…)

author: Beamin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 14, 2019, 10:58:23 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on March 10, 2019, 06:22:46 pm15$ a gram vs 50-60 for cocaine but still not cheap.We used to paint art on the walls with blue laundry soap it was clear on the wall but when you turned on a black light the walls light up a light blue color. So during the day the room looked totally normal at night much different and you could paint things you normally wouldn't like lamp shades furniture the ceiling with different patters. The stuff would stay there until it was easily washed off. Another was to fill bottles with tonic water and antifreeze. The best was opening a highlighter and drooping the center bit into water and then you had a very bright fluorescent fluid. With all of these combined you could make a room look totally foreign when the UV was turned on.