A plant was created by genetically modifying its structure to include luciferin, a chemical that gives jellyfish their radiant glow.
Today we have used a chemical reaction to make real flowers glow in the dark. Place a white flower into a glass for several hours to absorb the fluorescent highlighter ink.
When the flower has adsorbed the water, its petals will glow!
This experiment uses a "black light".
Black lights look purple, but it's the light they produce that you can't see that's really interesting. Black lights produce ultraviolet (UV) light. Our eyes can't perceive UV light, but our skin can feel it; UV light is the reason we get sunburns.
Some substances, like the ink in many highlighter pens, will glow under a UV light. The fluorescent ink absorbs the energy in the UV light, and then emits it as visible light.
