Replace the F40CW white fluorescent tubes with F40BLB's that provide BlackLight lighting and see where the urine is. As you may already know, Urine glows under a blacklight.-- Amishman35, May 16 2001 As you may already know, urine is visible to the naked eye. Besides, this would tend to make everything else in the bathroom harder to see, unless you peed on it.-- centauri, May 16 2001 Can anyone confirm this...I heard that some inner city toilets have installed blue lights to prevent junkies from (1) finding a vein and (2) shooting up.-- grackle, May 22 2001 These are all over Brisbane (Australia), certainly, in places where you'd never expect people to go to shoot up. Even really snooty bars have these nowadays. Quite pointless, I understand - a dodgy man I met in one of these places told me that, speaking for himself, he'd still have no trouble finding a vein under that light, because you have a shadow if your veins are raised when you make a fist. He showed me - I could see he might be right.-- AllenGrace, May 22 2001 Yeah, well enough baked. Bimbo's Bitchen' Burrito Kitchen in Seattle has a nice blacklight bathroom with fluorescent paintings on the walls.-- egnor, May 22 2001 'Backlighting to see where the urine is' In general, if the urine doesn't find the target, it's on the floor. Do the bathrooms you go to not have normal lights, that allow you to see liquids?
[What?]-- [ sctld ], May 22 2001 Put the blacklights in hotel rooms, instead, so you can see if there's urine on the bed.-- ejs, May 22 2001 I know that cat urine does glow under a black light. I don't know about other sorts...-- StarChaser, May 23 2001 Urine (human and feline) contains a significant proportion of phosphorus (in fact, phosphorus was first isolated by some guy heating urine with sand [he was trying to produce gold - don't ask]), so I suppose you would expect it to fluoresce.-- angel, May 23 2001 <grin> Bodily fluids were one of the few things that my brother and I DIDN'T test when we got our first blacklight...-- StarChaser, May 24 2001 I think this idea would only work if you sell flourescent food additives to make the act of defication an art form.-- StAndrew, Apr 02 2002 [StAndrew]: If you must make reference to defecation, at least spell it right.-- bristolz, Apr 02 2002 Glowy floor paintings?
Awfully smelly they would be though :-P-- Crazy Bastard, Aug 12 2002 Mmmmmm.... eat some neon crayons. Looks like Lite-Brite!-- Wes, Oct 09 2002 At my bar there is blacklights in the toilets.-- Gulherme, Oct 10 2002 Next HalfCon, Gulherme's place!-- RayfordSteele, Oct 11 2002 Put my black light in my bathroom and just noticed that ya, urine does glow, bright! So here I am to find that someone has already announced it to the world. Oh well. And yes, a good idea to have the lights installed for sanitary reasons, some times urine is not visible under normal lighting.
As long as there are some white objects in the bathroom it is not too dark, and a lot easier on the eyes when one has been sleeping for a while.-- AUGGIE, Nov 01 2006 Sorry guys, whilst urine and other bodily fluids fluoresce under UV light, it's not the same spectra as common UV lamps. UV lamps are for the most part UVA, which is only just off violet. Urine and other bodily fluids fluoresce under far UVB. Your whole illumination per watts thing is really bad by the time you're into UVB, and a handheld UV lamp of 100 watts will only illuminate fluids at a yard or so range. It's not so flash for your eyes either.
You can beat this by using an indicator chemical, which basically makes the fluids fluoresce at lower frequencies, and most criminology types will apply a spray to the area they are observing, then flood it with UVA light. So maybe some kind of automatic aerosol dispenser in the bathroom (also containing an air freshener, perhaps) would be the best way of doing this, and that way you can use the more efficient UVA tubes.
I know all this 'cause I forked out for a UV torch expecting it to show up all kinds of things, only to be sadly dissapointed. a little research revealed a lot of untruths floating around about UV light and even more innacurate marketing hype.-- Custardguts, Nov 01 2006 //Urine (human and feline) contains a significant proportion of phosphorus (in fact, phosphorus was first isolated by some guy heating urine with sand [he was trying to produce gold - don't ask]), so I suppose you would expect it to fluoresce.//
Actually phosphorous is neither fluorescent nor phosphorescent. It glows dimly in the open air, but that's a slow combustion reaction, not phosphorescence like they originally thought.-- Aq_Bi, Nov 02 2006 But do phosphorus *compounds* glow under UV, by whatever means?-- angel, Nov 02 2006 random, halfbakery