Spooky science: Turning purple to orange!

• Jennifer J. Birriel ^[1]
  1. [1] Morehead State University

     Morehead State University

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 62, Nº. 9, 2024, págs. 788-789
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
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• Resumen

  • Small LED “fairy” lights are now quite common and cheap: around $10 for a strand of 30 lights powered by 3 AAA batteries. Halloween fairy lights can be all purple, all orange, or alternating purple and orange. If you have a strand of these lights with the purple LEDs [Fig. 1(a)], you can “magically” turn purple light into orange light! How? Using a bit of extra virgin olive oil and employing the phenomenon of fluorescence of extra virgin olive oil, which contains high concentrations of chlorophyll.1,2 While previous articles make use of blue-violet and green lasers, you can do the same thing at home using holiday decorations you might already have on hand!