If your LED strip does not have adhesive tape that comes with it, you can use other adhesives or glue to attach the strip.
Glowing Edible Paint
By Teisha Biology Bytes Follow
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About: I am a scientist, professional science writer, and science educator. I’m also author of the Biology Bytes books: http://www.biology-bytes.com/book/. More About Teisha »
What’s better than paint that’s edible? Glowing edible paint! Because we all know food, paint, and pretty much everything, is a lot more fun when it’s glowing. This is a great way to encourage kids to eat their fresh fruits and vegetables! So if you want to make some glowing edible paint and have fun decorating fruits, veggies, cookies, snacks, and more, then this Instructables project is for you!
How does it work? The key ingredient is tonic water. Tonic water has a chemical called quinine in it, and quinine fluoresces (i.e., glows) when it’s put under an ultraviolet black light. Specifically, it glows a brilliant blue (nearly white). This Instructables project uses an edible paint recipe and substitutes tonic water for regular water to make the paint glow! (I’ve never seen anybody try this before and had to give it a shot – glad to find it worked so I could share my findings!)
Warning: Ultraviolet black lights can damage eyes and skin! Be sure not to look at the light when it’s on or shine it on your skin.
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Step 1: What You’ll Need
Here’s what you’ll need to make these glowing snacks:
- Flour
- Sugar
- Tonic water
- Medium-sized saucepan
- Measuring cups
- Measuring tablespoon
- Food colors. I used the standard red, blue, green, and yellow. This is to make your different-colored paints.
- Ultraviolet black light
- Whisk or fork
- Small paint brush or other painting/decorating utensil
- A cup for each color paint. I used five.
- You’ll also need some food to decorate! I tried various fruits and some small cookies. The larger and flatter the surface, the easier it is to make designs people can recognize. Also, white things are often autofluorescent (you can see some of the cookies were), so check them under the blacklight first to make sure you won’t get unwanted background glowing!
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Step 2: Mixing the Ingredients
In the medium-sized saucepan, mix together 2 tablespoons sugar and 1/3 cup flour. Then slowly add 2 cups tonic water – there will be a bit of bubbling because the tonic water is carbonated. Mix the ingredients together.
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Table of Contents
In reality, a black light does not emit a literal black-colored light, as the color black is basically the absence of any kind of light. It actually emits ultraviolet (UV light).
There are two main types of UV lights out there. The first kind has a bright blue glow and naturally emits blacklight without any sort of filtering.
The second kind, which is also the cheaper and more popular, basically contains a normal light which has a filter on it which blocks most of the visible light and allows the UV light to pass.
If you’re wondering how to make black light with LED strip lights and have a few spare strips of normal LED lights lying around, the method basically entails adding a colored tint to your LED strips which would allow only UV light to pass through it, thus acting as a blacklight.
How to Make Black Light with LED Strip Lights. What Can You Do with A Black Light?
What a black light does is it emits long-wave ultraviolet light in addition to very small amounts of visible light. The unique factor about it is that some fluorescent substances are able to absorb these UV lights and emit them in the form of visible light, giving them the appearance of glowing.
This means that some substances will only glow under a black light, which makes these lights extremely useful.
Black lights can be used for decorations as well as investigative purposes, which we’ll discuss later.
Things to Consider Before Making a Black Light with Led Strips. How to Make Black Light with LED Strip Lights
There are a few things you need to think about before you follow our step-by-step guidelines on how to make black light with LED strips.
Firstly, if you’re thinking about applying the paint directly on the surface of the LED lights, know that you may not be able to remove the paint. Therefore we suggest applying the paint on a transparent surface that can be removed.
Additionally, make sure the lights you’re using are capable of emitting UV light. Otherwise, the UV light filter will be useless.
Most importantly, understand that the method you’re going to be following is nowhere near perfect. Blacklights that are available in the market will be better at emitting UV lights than these ones, however, this is definitely the cheaper option.
