How Does a Glow Stick Work? Chemiluminescence
11Making your own glowstick is difficult and time consuming, and quite honestly all your hard work will be used up in a few hours of glow. Instead, I recommend purchasing your glow from Windy City Novelties. We use the highest quality products around to make sure you get a nice bright glow!
I get this question all the time: How does a glow stick work? Now depending on the age of the person asking, I have several different answers.
1. (to a young child) A glow stick works by magic, and it will stay lit till you go to sleep.
2. (to a teenager or curious adult) A glow stick works by a chemical reaction, when you break the ampule inside the stick it mixes two compounds to form the affect of glow until the reaction is finished.
But I’m going to guess that if you’re here then you want to really know how a glow stick works… So here is my answer to the do-it-yourselfers out there, and those that really need to know how stuff works.
CAVEAT: I am not a chemist. With that if there are words that I find too cumbersome to either easily explain or understand by there own then I will link them to a wikipedia page with their definition.
Glow sticks give off illumination as a by product of a chemical reaction called chemiluminescence (light from chemical reaction in difficult language). This is achieved by the mixing of two liquids that alone are uninteresting. 
The free flowing chemical inside the plastic tube is a combination of a dye for coloring (usually either a sensitizer or a fluorophor) and what has been called Cyalume which is also known as Bis(2,4,5-trichlorophenyl-6-carbopentoxyphenyl) oxalate (CPPO) which is a solid ester where the oxidation products are what causes the chemiluminescence (glow) in a glow stick.
If you’re adventurous and want to try to make it yourself it can be done by reacting 2-carbopentoxy-3,5,6-trichlorophenol with oxalyl chloride.
The liquid in the capsule inside the plastic housing of the glow stick is Hydrogen Peroxide. Same stuff that you get from Walgreens or CVS. If you’ve ever noticed how it bubbles on contact then you’ll understand why its the activating agent. When it mixes with the Cyalume it releases an Oxygen molecule that quickly forms Carbon Dioxide which in turn releases enough energy in the new bonds being broken and formed to excite the electrons in the dyes causing what you see as Glow. When the glow extinguishes you know that the chemical reaction is finished and that the dye has released enough photons (energy in the form of light) to be stable.
In true scientific terms the reaction is best described by Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D., who wrote on About.com :
“Specifically, the chemical reaction works like this: The hydrogen peroxide oxidizes the phenyl oxalate ester, to form phenol and an unstable peroxyacid ester. The unstable peroxyacid ester decomposes, resulting in phenol and a cyclic peroxy compound. The cyclic peroxy compound decomposes to carbon dioxide. This decomposition reaction releases the energy that excites the dye.”
It should be noted that while different dyes cause the different colors, some chemical formulations are actually patented. Most importantly is the red dye formulation, which is used in several different colored glows. If you’ve ever seen red dyed plastic tubing being used to get a red glow stick then you know that you are not buying from the patent holders or one of their licensees.
This posting has been made possible by the help of information obtained from the following references:
http://chemistry.about.com/od/howthingsworkfaqs/a/howlightsticks.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glow_stick
http://www.howstuffworks.com/light-stick.htm
as viewed on 6/11/08 at 11:02 AM
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Erin handles marketing for Windy City Novelties and is an avid partier. Aren't you?No related posts.
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