# Fluorescence

> Blue light hits a fluorescent plate — what’s absorbed comes back out as green.

![Fluorescence](https://www.loomrume.com/optics/stills/fluorescence.png)

**George Stokes** · 1852 — Stokes names it after fluorite

Herschel had already seen quinine water glow blue in sunlight. Stokes, in 1852, showed that the glow is always a longer wavelength than the light that pumped it, and borrowed the name from fluorite.

That shift is why a blue lamp can make a plate look green: the material eats the pump and re-emits something it can afford. On this bench the meter sees the re-emitted beam, not the leftover blue.

## Sources

- [Fluorescence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescence)
- [Stokes shift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stokes_shift)
- [George Stokes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stokes)

## Links

- [HTML](https://www.loomrume.com/examples/fluorescence)
- [Open in Studio](https://www.loomrume.com/experiments/new?template=fluorescence)
- [llms.txt](https://www.loomrume.com/llms.txt)