Lightsticks In The Toilet
Toilet after pouring in the contents of green and red cyalume lightsticks.
(Click for more photos of playing with Lightsticks In The Toilet (photo gallery retired)…)
Tonight while going through a few old boxes in the basement I came across red and green lightsticks, still in the wrappers. So, I opened them and activated them. After playing around with them for a little while I decided to do something I played with when I was much younger, except this time I decided to take some pictures of it.
What did I do? I cut open the light sticks and poured them in the toilet, watching the slowly changing, swirling psychedelic glow emanating from my toilet. Unfortunately these toilets aren’t that great for it, as most of the oily phenyl oxalate ester and H2O2 ran down into the bottom of the toilet and out of view. Still, there were some interesting things to see.
(Click to view each image at a larger size…)
More photos of this all are available here in the Lightsticks In The Toilet (photo gallery retired) album. Some of the better photos are:
· Toilet water with just the green cyalume lightstick compound in it.
· Red and green cyalume lightsticks setting on the toilet lid.
· Closer image of the toilet water containing cyalume lightstick compound.
· Lightstick compound swirling down the toilet as it is flushed.
· Photo 1 of red and green cyalume lightstick compound in toilet.
· Photo 2 of red and green cyalume lightstick compound in toilet.
· Photo 3 of red and green cyalume lightstick compound in toilet.
· Photo 4 of red and green cyalume lightstick compound in toilet.
· Glowing sink containing the remains of the cut open lightsticks.
· Lightsick remnants and cuts in the sink where I set them so they wouldn’t make a mess.
That is really fascinating.
Thanks. :) I wish I had a few more to play with, and I wish more had stayed in the bottom of the toilet, but I’m still fairly happy with the effect.
That gallery contains about… 1/4 or 1/3 of the total images captured, too.
I love these do you mind me using a few of your photos for a header in my LJ?
Not at all. Go to the gallery itself, click the thumbnail to get the ~640×480 image, then click again to get the full res image.
Thanks so much the images are so so alien and intersting. I love them.
You’re welcome, and thank you. Maybe I’ll try it again with more colors and a better setup for photographing them. This was just playing around… although I’m pretty happy with it.
New meaning to “rave shits”!
For a good time, find a large glass receptacle (I have some stupid large square glass vase) and fill w/ 4 (or more) big jugs of mineral oil, then dump in lightsticks. That’s prwetty entertaining as well.
When I was younger I had a peanut butter jar containing half water + blue food coloring and half cooking oil. I’d play with that a whole lot, watching it swirl, settle, etc.
I have one of those that my brother made in elementary school, I still love it. :)
That is so neat! It’s like a universe in your toilet!
very cool. i saved one for wallpaper on my computer. weird having a toilet pic on my desktop, but soooooo trippy.
It was much easier to use a toilet as opposed to the sink or a bucket. The stuff in the lightstick is kinda oily, and cleaning that off of a plastic bucket would be difficult.
neat stuff. reminds me quite a bit of my abstract photography phase. now i’m curious what would happen if you exposed color photo paper directly to that stuff…