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How an Ultraviolet Blacklight Flashlight Unveils Mysteries

The ultraviolet blacklight flashlight has become an excellent tool in revealing hidden items toinvestigators and researchers, and lay tradespeople in numerous occupations. The blacklight flashlight shines ultraviolet (UV) light on substances with fluorescent properties, causing these to glow. These substances are otherwise invisible to the naked human eye, and in fact the fluorescent effect is greatly reduced, if not entirely masked, when white light is present.

Scorpion led flashlight

An ultraviolet blacklight flashlight thus unveils secrets and mysteries. Some of these secrets are intentionally hidden from plain view, like watermarks, and a few occur naturally, such as the spectral properties of gemstones.

Prior to the recent developments in light emitting diode (LED) technology, a somewhat bulky apparatus would have been required to generate the sufficiently powered black light for these particular applications. Nevertheless the high luminous efficiency of modern LEDs permits strong, bright UV light in a flashlight easily held in the palm of one hand, rendering application implementation practical and convenient. For example, Simon Flashlights sells a UV Blacklight Flashlight that is powered by three AAA batteries and uses 14 small LEDs to focus the ultraviolet beam.

Let’s now examine a few of the many applications now making use of this modern device.

In this particular high-tech society which we are a part, proving the authenticity of government currency and documents has turned into a significant challenge. Precision counterfeiting is quite sophisticated, requiring increasingly complicated countermeasures. Embedded watermarks and holographs are examples of such countermeasures.

Tellers in clerks and banks in shops often find it employment necessity to check for these particular embedded markings in the currency passed before them. They are doing so through a small UV LED flashlight, that causes the markings to fluoresce. (In cases like this, the effect is bright enough not to be masked by surrounding white light.) Inside a similar manner, TSA personnel validate your passport or driver’s license.

A favorite application for your ultraviolet LED flashlight is definitely the detection of urine along with other bodily fluids, both from humans and from animals. The amino salts and acids suspended in these fluids possess fluorescent characteristics, although the black light doesn’t trigger fluorescence with any strength until the substances are deposited after the containing fluids have evaporated.

Cat owners use UV LED flashlights to ferret out your out-of-way corners in which their pets have urinated. The fluorescence has an amber color. Restaurant inspectors utilize the lights to check for rat food and infestation contamination. Hotel inspectors (and picky guests) examinecarpets and sheets, and mattresses for cleanliness by way of an ultraviolet flashlight.

A novel application for blacklight flashlights is scorpion hunting. The Southwest is more or less overrun by the arthropods, and several residents are diligent about capturing them. Being nocturnal, scorpions are quite difficult to find during the day, and they scamper far from ordinary white-light flashlights. Nevertheless the UV flashlight causes their exoskeletons to fluoresce in a blue-green color, and this makes their capture quite simple.

Gemologists analyze jewels to determine their value. Often significant sums of cash ride on their own judgments, which derive from whether or not the jewel has become heat-treated, has flaws, or is synthetic. Traditionally their work has required expensive laboratory equipment, but an LED ultraviolet flashlight has proved to be remarkably reliable for this work, particularly for preliminary analyses. The imperfections related to each type of precious stone fluoresce in a unique way.

There are many applications we haven’t even mentioned. Obviously, the flexibility of the LED ultraviolet blacklight flashlight broadens everyday.