Many of our customers are designing UVC arrays to sanitize N95 masks and other medical equipment; they use our UV radiometers to help with the design and manufacturing process. David is trapped working at home as many of us are and before he left the office, he gathered some of the UV emitters from our lab and has been playing around with them to see what fluoresces in his household.
Pictured are his wife’s lab coat, some glowing Gasparilla beads, a face mask (which doesn’t fluoresce), some lab goggles, a glass of Mountain Dew, a level, a hardback copy of Demon Under the Microscope, a globe, a post-it note, some GLO-Fish food, and a SL1-LED.
If you look closely, the clear plastic lenses of the lab goggles cast a shadow because plastic does a fantastic job of blocking UV light!
David also has a school of glow fish which are genetically engineered by one of our customers to glow under UVA and blue light. Pickles the dachshund doesn’t ever seem to know that the fish are there. She’s a good girl.
David’s wife Ami has turned a Lego Harry Potter Advent Calendar into her “Quarantine Advent” to keep track of the days.
StellarNet’s BLACK-Comet spectrometers have a holographic concave grating design which has higher sensitivity to UV and lower stray light compared to other miniature spectrometer designs. Added benefits are real-time measurement and no moving parts, so the instrument can last a lifetime without any major servicing or repairs.
UV light has effects which can both benefit and harm life. UV’s high energy nature can be used to sanitize, solarize, activate, cure and destroy.
It is no secret that UV light is very destructive. StellarNet customers are building instruments using UV emitters (LEDs, Deuterium lamps, Xenon arc lamps, etc.) designed to sanitize tooth brushes, air ducts, surfaces, tools, medical equipment, utensils, etc. – anything a human might come into contact with is a candidate for UV sanitization. If you are designing a product to help with the recent COVID-19 outbreak, let us know so that we can see if we can add any special discounts to your order.
Solarization is the breakdown of a compound via light exposure – if you’ve ever sat on white patio furniture which has been sitting out in the sun for a few seasons and ended up with a chalky oxidized powder on your clothes, you can thank UV light for breaking down the surface of that chair and ruining your clothes.
Users in the automotive industry make special hard-coat to protect the plastic housings and lenses of headlights from weathering, debris, and UV light exposure. There are also UV conditioners in paints to help protect them from breaking down over time. When a headlight becomes yellow, oxidized and hazy, it needs to be polished to look new again; after the polishing, an aftermarket protective hard-coating can be applied to extend the life of the polishing job.
In mammals, UVB is an important component of the process of natural formation of Vitamin D below the skin. Humans only need about 10 minutes of sun exposure to form their daily dose but we can also take supplements as a substitute. Any longer than 10 minutes isn’t really going to do you any good as prolonged sun exposure increases the chance of having UV light damage your DNA leading to skin cancer.
UV light is used in dentistry to cure epoxies used to bond and repair teeth. Similar epoxies are used to repair boats and surf boards.
Many birds can see UV light and their feathers have unique UV reflectance to help attract mates. StellarNet has customers using UV radiometry to study “Clux” for chickens as well as the photopic response of turkeys to better understand their behavior and improve habitat lighting for animals in captivity and agricultural settings.
There are many applications for UV light; let us know if you are working with any applications where you want to quantify UV light and one of our expert Applications Scientists will be happy to assist you. Contactus@StellarNet.us
Click on the links below for your specific Light Measurement Application!
Home Quarantine Article by David Parrino
StellarNet Senior Technical Sales & Support
& OEM Business Director
