Seiko . Titanium. (Pilots Glow in the dark Luminous Dial)

Seiko . Titanium. (Pilots Glow in the dark Luminous Dial)

What Makes Dials Glow

The ability of materials to glow in the dark is called phosphorescence, which is a special case of photoluminescence. Photoluminescence is the ability of some materials to emit light after exposure to light. Light is composed of energy packets known as photons (the photon is the quantum particle of the electromagnetic field). While the exact quantum mechanical description of photoluminescence is complicated, the basic idea is simple: if an electron orbiting an atom in a certain material absorbs a photon, it will be excited to a higher energy state, and when the electron "relaxes" to its ground state, it emits a photon which we see as visible light.