The author, John Marek, is a writer and executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.
If you watched either of the NFL playoff games this past Sunday, you probably saw the trailer for a new Liam Neeson movie. Liam has created quite a career for himself in the role of former secret government operative seeking revenge on those who have wronged him. But it was the movie’s title, “Blacklight,” that got my attention.
The term blacklight has definite connotations for people of a certain age – which happens to be mine. In the 1970s, blacklights and the garish posters accompanying them were a sort of hippie-lite experience for teens who wanted to play-act at counterculture.
I suppose actual dope fiends, revolutionaries and go-go booted ragamuffins also had flocked luminescent wall hangings in their lairs, but my guess is that 99.7 percent of the sales of those posters were to post-pubescent boys who adorned their walls with “far out” imagery of mushrooms, wizards, castles and tigers, flipped on the blacklight and cranked up “Wish You Were Here” while savoring the grooviness of it all. Perhaps in a fit of Pink Floyd-induced passion, they padded downstairs and chanced an illicit swig of their parents’ Blue Nun.
Or perhaps I share too much.
Blacklight posters operate on the principle that certain substances glow when exposed to ultraviolet (UV) light. Inks infused with phosphorus vividly illuminate when exposed to a light source that filters out the visible spectrum, supposedly mimicking how LSD users see things. I will have to take their word for that, but I can tell you that it significantly enhances the Blue Nun experience.
Blacklight posters are often printed on black flocked paper, which has the look and feel of velvet, to enhance the effect. The flocking absorbs more of the visible light and provides a blacker backdrop for the vibrant colors. This is necessary because inexpensive black light bulbs are just incandescent bulbs with a coat of dark purple paint on the inside. The purple paint absorbs some of the visible light but is relatively inefficient. Higher quality black lights are fluorescent or LED and produce more of their output in the UV spectrum.
Of course, posters aren’t the only thing that shows up under blacklight. Some organic substances like blood and urine glow a deep violet, even in tiny amounts, aiding crime scene investigators, and several types of rocks radiate spectacularly under UV light.
Anson County is home to one of the largest collections of fluorescent rocks in the United States. Housed at the Wadesboro Rotary Planetarium and Science Center, the dozens of rock samples are displayed in a special darkroom under high-quality UV light. The effect is spectacular. Now, if they would just play “Dark Side of the Moon.”