A Glow to Show to the Path you Go

Almost everyone like to gaze at the sky at count those stars at night when it becomes dark. We long to create an artificial environment in our bedrooms, as that of the same sky that we see during the clear sky with stars twinkling around. The idea has now become a reality with the help of those radium paints. It finds its application also in the watch dials and clocks.

What makes it glow?

Occasionally you will see something glowing but it does not need charging. The most common place is on the hands of expensive watches. In these products, the phosphor is mixed with a radioactive element, and the radioactive emissions energize the phosphor continuously. In the past, the radioactive element was radium, which has a half-life of 1600 years. Today, most glowing watches use a radioactive isotope of hydrogen called tritium (which has a half-life of 12 years) or promethium, a man-made radioactive element with a half-life of around three years.

Before, the luminescence was short and it has to be energised again to make it glow. But today we have substances like Strontium Aluminate which has much longer persistence.

A whole new idea :

These substances can be painted along the road and in the middle of the road. So these "glow" paints will eventually glow at night without the need of electricity and other power sources. Sometimes it becomes difficult to have a light post in mountain regions. This may result in wrong judging of roads. If we paint the roads with these paints then it automatically illuminates at night and also when there is fog due to its nature the substance starts to glow. Since the colour of the light emitted is usually green or red it is visible even in thick fogs. Thus it is easy for a driver to navigate through the turns and bends in the mountain areas when there is thick fog. Even in the NH roads it eliminates the need of a light. These glow paints as a whole save lot of energy wasted in illuminating the roads with so much light that we don't really need.

You can use "glow" paints in the footpaths and pavements where you don't need so much light.

A drawback is that the intensity of the light emitted is not so high and the persistent of light is also only for few hours at the maximum extent. During cloudy and rainy days it won't be able be energise to optimum and desired level.

Whatever be the fact, the new "glow" paint will eventually create a turning point in the history of energy conservation.
~SKC