Question: how did you make the chemicals glow?

Bryony Hockin answered on 1 Mar 2019:

The chemicals that I make are fluorescent, which means that they give off light. Usually the way this works is that when I shine a light on the molecule and give it energy, it gets very excited and needs to get rid of the energy somehow – so it shines some light back at me. It’s a bit like if you eat a lot of sugar and then have lots of energy to run around a playground, the energy has to go somewhere! Sometimes the molecule hangs onto a bit of the energy that we give it from the light we shone on it, so the light that the molecule gives off will be a different colour. This is unlike reflection of light, where the light we see reflected off a molecule is the same colour. This is also why most of my chemicals glow blue even if I shine a white light on them.