Glows in the Dark
Think back to the late sixties when kids had blacklights in their rooms to illuminate posters that were treated to "glow in the dark". They were taking advantage of the fact that paper treated with certain chemicals would fluoresce under ultraviolet (UV) light. With much more intense ultraviolet lights, this same principle can be used by an analyst today in a variety of applications. The technique can be used as the first step in problem solving by detecting fluorescent substances to be subsequently sampled for identification by chemical analyses. Alternatively, in many cases, an ultraviolet light inspection alone will be sufficient to examine and document physical evidence. Chemists also take advantage of ultraviolet light when performing sophisticated fluorescence analyses which are beyond the scope of this article.
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