The luminous hands

[IceBoy]

Hi All,

I have a small watch collection from Omega's to Seiko's to Casio.

They all live in a draw and get no light.

When I do wear a different watch the hands don't really light up at night ?

If i stick them under a bulb for a few secs they work well for a few minutes.

So how do they work ?

the longer I leave them under the light or on a shelf win sun light....the lnger the luminous hands will show in the dark ??

IceBoy

[ShadownINja]

Los Angeles said:

If the big hand falls off just add "ish" to each numeral. Second post is always the joke post

That's not even vaguely relevant beyond it being a watch joke?

[whoami]

IceBoy said:

They all live in a draw

A draw?

[driverrob]

The last watch I hand with proper luminous paint on the hands & face was a Timex, back in the 60s. The paint is radioactive and pretty rare these days, I would hope.

The norm now is for photo-luminescent paint; it absorbs strong light to produce a reversible chemical reaction which gives out a weak light which, naturally, lasts longer than the strong light used to 'charge it up'.
It's a bit like charging up a NiCd battery for 5 hours then using it to light an l.e.d. for a couple of days.

[Seb d]

driverrob said:

it absorbs strong light to produce a reversible chemical reaction which gives out a weak light which, naturally, lasts longer than the strong light used to 'charge it up'.
It's a bit like charging up a NiCd battery for 5 hours then using it to light an l.e.d. for a couple of days.

Are you saying that after 10 minutes in the sunshine, the lume on my watch will last for a few billion years...?

I find that even after sucking up sunlight for a whole day, even the strongest lume will fade to nothingness within a few hours. Tritium gas tube lighting for the win! Although T25 tubes aren't as bright as T25 lume, but that's where the US-spec Ball Hydrocarbon Trieste comes in, with its T100(!) Tritium tubes, i.e. 4 times brighter than normal lume!