Talk:Triboluminescence

Methyl Salicylate
For a lab at uni, we made methyl salicylate. After reading this article, in particular the following statement, WintOGreen Life Savers work especially well for creating such sparks, because wintergreen oil (methyl salicylate) is fluorescent and converts ultraviolet light into blue light I decided to test it by putting our methyl salicylate samples under a UV light. No fluorescence was observed. Perhaps I shouldn't believe everything I read on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.223.192.32 (talk) 04:44, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * You probably used the wrong wavelength UV to excite your sample (360 nm instead of 254 nm). The excitation spectrum of methyl salicylate and the emission spectrum can be found here: http://pages.towson.edu/ladon/wg/candywww.htm 138.246.2.111 (talk) 17:46, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

The article says the sparks are faint and suggests that the sparks from any Triboluminescence would best be viewed in a dark environment, how did you go from this to using a UV light!!?

I can't test this myself (that would probably be seen as original research though anyway) but a brief trip to Google confirms there are reliable sources to verify that "WintOGreen Life Savers" show this effect better than other hard candy - ie. "Why do Wint-O-Green Life Savers spark in the dark?." 03 November 2000. HowStuffWorks.com.  04 August 2009. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.242.17.174 (talk) 19:26, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I removed the redundant mention of 'Wint-O-Green' from the general definition/description of the effect. It's sufficient that they are mentioned once in the chapter 'Examples'. 88.152.59.11 (talk) 10:37, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

Confused terminology
I am currently reading all I can find on this subject and the more I read to more I am convinced that the terminology people use is a mess. It seems nearly all forms of mechanoluminescence are being called triboluminescence, even when no rubbing-like action is involved. The term is being used to describe light emitted during sonication, and more recently in peeling tape to produce x-rays. The Wintergreen mint example given in this article definitely sounds like a fracture-based phenomenon, and the quartz example in this article sounds like piezoelectricity. Rubbing of diamond is very different from grinding diamond, so I wonder if that should not be corrected, or at least elaborated on.

I also found an entry here listing peizoluminescence, but with no article to go with it. The quartz example given here sounds more like ordinary piezoelectricity and the light would be produced by the same process as involved in sparks, or static electricity, or lightening - i.e., ionization of air. At this point in my education I doubt there is such a thing as peizoluminescence since it seems that the ionization of air is what produces the light, although I am finding many abstracts that describe the phenomenon in work they are doing, but none describe the phenomenon itself. Scientists can be just as flaky as anyone else when it comes to promoting their work. It doesn't help that Googling takes me to Tesla and UFO sites.

The recent papers describing the production of x-rays by peeling tape seems to indicate what the mechanism is. Electrons jumping the gap between the recently separated surfaces knock some orbital electrons around in the "target" material, and as a result electromagnetic radiation is emitted, much in the way x-ray tubes and cathode-ray tubes work. Wikipedia is probably is not the place to clear up this subject, but maybe we shouldn't help confuse it.


 * I recently noticed that abrasive water jet cutting of ceramics produced a yellow/orange glow at the point of impact. Is this triboluminescence or some other phenomenon? Plantsurfer (talk) 07:59, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Video links
I suggest adding some video links. I was looking for Ute ceremonial links but I could only find this experiment link so far ( I am not the author of the video) :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLkIoB5Iv5o —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.219.222.71 (talk) 11:09, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

M610 (talk) 23:48, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

History Section Revision (Piezoluminescence)
The history section seems to conflate mechanical light sources which operate through peizoelectricity with triboluminescence. As far as I can tell the first noted instance of triboluminescence is the barometer glow. I'm going to shorten the history section unless people can show that the examples of cystals producing light are tribological.(Lucas(CA) (talk) 20:27, 2 October 2013 (UTC))

Mention of this article on youtube
Of course people now make youtube videos where they criticize the article, rather than edit it. Because that's how wikipedia works, right? %-)
 * physicsgirl on youtube

Diana Cowern summarizes and adds several sources to the bottom of the video, which might be usable to improve the article.

--Kim Bruning (talk) 16:31, 25 June 2018 (UTC)


 * How Ridiculous has a video where they think this effect is created. (Citation needed) 50.35.93.116 (talk) 18:06, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The video includes them smashing glass spheres together, and a brief flash of light that might be useful as an image on this page. 50.35.93.116 (talk) 18:13, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * True 108.44.167.147 (talk) 14:14, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Her video is pretty accurate except that she attributes triboelectricity to just contact potential which has been known to be incorrect for ~ 100 years. Ldm1954 (talk) 23:54, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

A few expansions on the Theory might help?
Does the Theory section belong under Fractoluminescence?

The section is interesting, but seems vague. I added a citation request, since I can't find much info on some of the statements. A few more Theory citations/links might be helpful.. I'm hoping someone with some understanding will help.

Nostep (talk) 22:33, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

"Not fully understood"
Why is this still part of the initial description? The physics are well documented, analysed and readily understood by physicists. The principles are basic physics, albeit eye catching in one's private home. Arcsoda (talk) 07:19, 28 June 2021 (UTC)


 * For completeness, the science is not yet settled (two years after the original post). You can see some aspects in Triboelectric effect. Ldm1954 (talk) 18:44, 17 October 2023 (UTC)