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Wintergreen Sparks
Try this some time...
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Wintergreen Lifesavers, when eaten at night with your mouth open, will emit tiny sparks of light.  Its a fun thing to do when on the line on your tank on a cold winter night with no enemy in sight during a war game.

I looked up the reason why a long time ago, but I saw a show on the Science Channel about earthquakes the other day, and they mentioned triboluminescence, which reminded me of the Lifesaver thing...

What we have here is something called triboluminescence or TL. Simply put, triboluminescence is light resulting from crushing or tearing.

Provided by methyl salicylate (oil of wintergreen), when the sugar crystals in the Life Savers get crushed, electrons break loose and scatter all over creation. The electrons begin to get lonesome for the sugar crystals they broke free from, and decide to return. Problem is that nitrogen molecules took their place and the electrons crash into the nitrogen - causing little blue sparks.

 

 

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