Complex Numbers

That Healthy Glow

How about some applied science from Gastro Obscura?

    How to Make Fluorescent Food  
A UV light and specific ingredients can make a dish or drink change color.

Because the greatest thing about science is all the cool shit we can do with it.

When I was in college, I went to a party that I’ll never forget.

Then it wasn't that great a party.

But the real spectacle was inside. There was not a piece of furniture to be seen. The walls of all the empty rooms were covered in newspapers, and all the overhead lights had been replaced with black-light bulbs, filling the air with a purple haze.

I sometimes idly speculate whether you can still get those bulbs, and if they make LED versions. But I don't care enough to look it up.

Of course, there was beer on offer, but everyone was drinking gin and tonics. Because of the black light, the drinks all glowed an eerie blue, due to the quinine in the tonic water.

I've seen that effect. They used real quinine, though, not the severely watered-down stuff from Schweppes or Canada Dry. I don't know if it would still work with those; I think so, but not to the same intensity. In any case, a gin and tonic is one of Nature's most perfect cocktails.

So when my coworker showed me a post about making a fluorescent cake, I knew I had to try baking one myself.

Someone got baked, anyway.

Extracted from the bark of the Peruvian cinchona tree, quinine was once the only known treatment for malaria.

Legend has it the G&T was invented by Brits in India. They used quinine for its antimalarial properties, and to make it more palatable, they added London dry gin.

Leave it to Brits to add gin to something to make it taste better.

George Gabriel Stokes, the Irish physicist, coined the term fluorescence in 1852 after scientists observed that a quinine sulfate solution glowed when exposed to what is now known as UV light.

Thus leading to possible confusion in chemistry class: it doesn't have much to do with the element fluorine, whose etymology has to do with "flow." Fluorescence was named for one fluorescent material, which happened to have fluorine in it. But fluorine isn't the only element that can be involved with fluorescence. Quinine doesn't contain fluorine.

I told you it could be confusing.

Outside the minibar and medicine cabinet, there’s another extremely common substance that gives off a shocking glow under ultraviolet light: chlorophyll.

I don't have houseplants. Every time I've tried, they realized they were living with me and lacked locomotion, so committed suicide. But if I did, I'd totally put them under black light every once in a while.

So I went to the health-food store and bought a tiny bottle of liquid chlorophyll—which some people consume for its supposed health benefits, ranging from weight loss to improving the skin.

I don't doubt that vegetables have health benefits. Liquid chlorophyll sounds more like a duck: quack, quack, quack.

The author goes on to describe the psychedelic-cake-making process, which didn't end up involving liquid chlorophyll solution. You know, in case you might want to try it. Personally, I at least see no harm in trying, but I don't know everything.

Or you could simply pour yourself a glass of tonic water. The gin is optional.

No, it is not.