Interesting liquid diffuser medium
Richard J Kinch
Action all-purpose cleaner
(http://www.fantastik.com/best-way-to-clean-granite-countertops/), and it
makes the beam brilliantly visible. The plastic bottle and liquid product
are themselves quite optically clear, no doubt to enhance the consumer
appeal.
What's going on? The orange dye?
Cute way to demonstrate lens rays and internal reflection with household
stuff. Doesn't spoil like the drops-of-milk-in-water trick.
mp...@oscintl.com
Richard, Wow!
It took me a while to get over to Safeway and get a bottle to try out -
Wow! very cool, I could even see the reflected beam too off the inside
of the bottle. I was able to see the primary beam and the reflected
beam, TIR at the critical angle, etc.
I got the patent listed on the bottle 6384010 and have started reading
it but it is a heavy dose of chemistry and I can seem to decode the
different materails to understand why it fluoresces or scatters. I am
guessing it is from the orange oil. I tried some other liquids in my
kitchen and I got a nice visible beam in virgin olive oil too.
I found out this fantastic product has a ph of 12, so it is not
suitable for elementary or middle school students to mess with, maybe
the olive oil would be ok.
I have also replied to the sci.chem group in hopes that some people
there can tell us why it scatters or fluoresces?
Michael
www.oscintl.com
luc...@sbcglobal.net
<mp...@oscintl.com> wrote in message
news:1151622153.1...@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
>
> Richard J Kinch wrote:
>> I happened to shine a laser pointer through a bottle of Fantastik Orange
>> Action all-purpose cleaner
>> (http://www.fantastik.com/best-way-to-clean-granite-countertops/), and it
>> makes the beam brilliantly visible. The plastic bottle and liquid
>> product
>> are themselves quite optically clear, no doubt to enhance the consumer
>> appeal.
>>
>> What's going on? The orange dye?
>>
>> Cute way to demonstrate lens rays and internal reflection with household
>> stuff. Doesn't spoil like the drops-of-milk-in-water trick.
>
> Wow! very cool, I could even see the reflected beam too off the inside
> of the bottle. I was able to see the primary beam and the reflected
> beam, TIR at the critical angle, etc.
>
> I got the patent listed on the bottle 6384010 and have started reading
> it but it is a heavy dose of chemistry and I can seem to decode the
> different materails to understand why it fluoresces or scatters.
Light scattering happens with particles that are on the order of (or larger
than) the wavelength of the light, probably ca. 750 nm for a red laser. I
just happened to watch "How It's Made" the other night, the episode showing
what goes into dish detergent, liquid hand soap, etc. Turns out detergent
solutions used in dish soap and hand cleaner are actually very low
viscosity, and they have to add a polymeric thickener. I'm guessing
something like polyox or sodium polyacrylate are the polymers used. I do
know typical commercial polyox molecular weights are on the order of
millions. I don't know what sort of radius of gyration these have in water
solution for these molecules (including hydration and all), but I wonder if
it is big enough to interact with and scatter light.
Eric Lucas
Richard J Kinch
> solutions used in dish soap and hand cleaner are actually very low
> viscosity, and they have to add a polymeric thickener.
This product is very watery. I doubt it is thickened.
Richard J Kinch
Glad to see somebody followed up on this. I was beginning to think I
imagined something.
redbelly
Richard J Kinch wrote:
> I happened to shine a laser pointer through a bottle of Fantastik Orange
> Action all-purpose cleaner
Richard,
Were you using a red pointer or a green one?
Mark
Richard J Kinch
> Were you using a red pointer or a green one?
Red. Seems to be very deep red according to my diffraction grating
measurement.
Fleetie
> measurement.
Then it is just scattering, and not fluorescence. If it had been green,
and the beam had looked, say, orange, in the medium of propagation,
it would have been largely fluorescence.
While the size of the molecules in the medium through which the beam
is propagating does affect the brightness of the visible "beam" you
see, even gases with their very small atoms (noble gases) or molecules
(otherwise) have enough atomic/molecular size to produce detectable
scattering with powerful laser beams. See "Rayleigh scattering".
Rayleigh scattering gets stronger as the 4th power of the frequency
of the light, so is much stronger for blue light than for red. This
is part of the reason why the daytime sky is blue, and the sun looks
red/orange at sunrise/sunset when its light is travelling through a
great length of the atmosphere. There are other kinds of scattering
in effect too, though. (Mie scattering, I think, at least.)
Others here will know and be able to tell you far more about this
than I can.
One well-known experiment is to shine a powerful laser beam through
air, and then pour heavy SF6 (or similar gas) into the beam, and the
brightness of the beam as it's scattered by the large gas molecules
apparently increases. Then allow helium gas atoms to float up into
the path of the beam, and the brightness becomes less than it was
when it was going through air. I've never tried it myself, but so
I've read.
Martin
--
M.A.Poyser Tel.: 07967 110890
Manchester, U.K. http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=fleetie
redbelly
Cool, that means I can try it with my own red pointer.
Three possible explanations come to mind:
1. Scattering from particles in the fluid
2. Scattering from small air bubbles in the fluid
3. It's possible, but unlikely, that it is fluorescence. I know it
sounds unlikely, since you have red photons going in, but it is
possible for fluorescence to produce short-wave photons from longer
wave ones. I.R. detector cards, commonly used in laser labs, work this
way.
Mark