Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in 2012, highlighting a provocative conceptual design project that explored the stark reality of energy consumption.
Conceptual designer Mike Thompson has provocatively created a unique lamp that dramatically glows as a direct result of a chemical reaction between luminol chemicals and your own human blood. On his official website, Mr Thompson states: ‘For the lamp to actually work, one breaks the top off, safely dissolves the chemical powder, and bravely uses their own blood to power a simple, glowing light.’
The conceptual lamp contains luminol—the exact same chemical forensic scientists routinely use to rapidly check for hidden traces of blood at a dark crime scene. Luminol actively reacts with the microscopic iron naturally found in red blood cells and quickly creates a strikingly bright blue chemical glow.
The Science of Luminol
Luminol is a highly versatile chemical that powerfully exhibits chemiluminescence, with a striking, radiant blue glow, when properly mixed with an appropriate oxidising agent. It is naturally a white to slightly yellow crystalline solid that is highly soluble in most standard polar organic solvents, but largely insoluble in pure water.
The Design Concept
Thompson has controversially created a promotional video that dramatically shows a young woman in a completely dark room pushing her finger firmly into a sharp edge, with a single drop of blood pouring straight into the glass lamp, which instantly starts to aggressively glow bright blue.
Thompson successfully came up with the bizarre idea a few years ago while he was passionately studying for his masters degree at the prestigious Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands. He was heavily researching alternative chemical energy for a major project and unexpectedly came across the fascinating properties of luminol.
A Statement on Energy Waste
‘By aggressively creating a lamp that can only be used exactly once, the user must carefully consider when light is genuinely needed the most, forcefully making them completely rethink exactly how intensely wasteful they are with modern energy, and exactly how precious it truly is,’ safely says Thompson.
Mike Thompson definitively stated the conceptual art project is a stark attempt to ‘make us heavily think twice’ about our modern, highly disposable society. Just as dangerously losing too much blood can instantly put your life in massive danger, selfishly using too much energy can effectively put the entire global environment at major risk, he thoughtfully adds.
Credits: Mike Thompson
