So, tomorrow I'm giving a demonstration to high school students (with quite a few other undergrads). My particular demonstration is in the video at the bottom. I have no creative bone in my body, at least not when it comes to storytelling, and it would be kind of nice if I could have something to talk about while I'm doing the demonstration. We kinda aren't supposed to talk about what's going on, which I could easily do anyways. For example, we have one routine demonstration, Elephant's Toothpaste, in which the demonstrator essentially talks about needing a large volume of toothpaste, so they mix the chemicals and voila! an exothermic reaction creating shittons of "toothpaste". My demo is one that we haven't ever tried before, and I haven't done myself yet (only got the CuI on Friday, but we left at 3:30 before I could play with it for a research presentation session). It's essentially a solution that, under UV light and certain temperature...situations, it gives off different wavelengths of visible light.

Long story short, while I'm doing this demo, I need a somewhat related anecdote. I'm asking SEN so late because it honestly didn't occur to me until just now. And I was working on a matrix problem for this entire fucking weekend.


As promised (ignore the voice modulator, he's obviously a professor that kinda doesn't want to be instantly recognized):

I think you'll have a difficult time coming up with an anecdote for why you'd want something fluorescent only when it's been cooled down to liquid nitrogen temperatures.

Eskimos wanted a light source for when it was too windy to light a fire? I don't know.

Just keep saying "now bear with me on this..." and go with azrael's science eskimos wanting to have light and are out of oil/combustables.

IT WILL WORK.

Yes.

People will find it funny (in an ironic sense) and still learn something in the process.

Imagine a parallel world where LEDs never got invented. But people still wanted beautiful colorful lights.

Or claim you've found a new method to measure the temperature of water: http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/10/pranksters-blamed-for-turning-canadian-river-fluorescent-green/

Dude, it looks a million times better in person than it does on video. But I got a pink instead of the blue after heating once and evaporating:


That little green spot is from an earlier piece that probably froze to the plastic tray I had it in and broke

Quote from NudeRaider

Imagine a parallel world where LEDs never got invented. But people still wanted beautiful colorful lights.

Or claim you've found a new method to measure the temperature of water: http://www.aolnews.com/2011/01/10/pranksters-blamed-for-turning-canadian-river-fluorescent-green/

The lights one sounds pretty sweet, but I'm not sure I can drag it out that long. Also, nice link, made me laugh a good, hearty laugh.

The Eskimo fire one could work, if I embellished a little.

Or I could just show the demo. This shit is so sweet the kids wont listen to me anyways.