Research

I decided to do some research on glow sticks themselves rather than the glow balls which I was unable to find much on.

Glow sticks are a translucent plastic tube that contains isolated chemicals, one housed in a glass tube within the plastic tube. The light from a glow stick is produced when the two chemicals mix creating a  chemiluminescent reaction. The inner glass tube usually contains Phenyl oxalate and a fluorescent dye. the other chemical in the glow stick is Hydrogen peroxide. a by-product of the reaction is phenol.

 The first patents on chemiluminescent reactions arrived in the 60s and 70s with the first patent attributed to  Bernard Dubrow and Eugene Daniel Guth in 1965. The current glow stick design where a glass tube designed to be broken encased in  a plastic tube was patented in 1976 by Vincent J. Esposito, Steven M. Little, and John H. Lyons.

 EL WIRE

In my redesign I want to change the glow sticks to a longer lasting light source, I have chosen electroluminescent wire or EL wire to do this as it provides a similar amount of light, is long lasting and has a low electricity consumption. El wire is a copper wire coated in phosphor then around that is wrapped two very thin copper wires isolated from the inner wire by the phosphor, surrounding that is a clear PVC sleeve, then after that is another PVC sleeve that is either clear, coloured  or fluorescent.  When the current is applied to the thin wires and the copper core the phosphor is the part that creates the glow, normally the glow is aqua green and the outer PVC sheath is often coloured to create the desired colour.

El wire requires a driver to function as it requires an AC current rather than a DC at a frequency of 60hz to 4000hz and a voltage between 50-120V AC RMS.