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Scot’s Product Review: The Orb and UV Paqlite
We have many needs; food, water, air, shelter, and heat come to mind. To acquire and use all those things, we have to be able to find them, and the tool used the most is our vision. Our eyes work great during the day but not so well at night, so having a way to make light is vital.
We started off making light the same way we made heat and cooked, with fire, but that has drawbacks. We finally came up with electricity, and now the most common way we make light is to flip a switch on the wall. We also have flashlights for when we want to be mobile. A drawback to electric lights, of course, is that they need electricity, which has to be provided by wires or batteries.
As we cast about for alternatives that need little or no electricity, someone came up with glow sticks that contain two chemicals that are kept separate until a glass vial inside the stick is broken by bending it. When the chemicals mix, presto, we have light. There are some major drawbacks, though, with these products; chief among them is a limited shelf life. I only get a year or so of life out of mine, but I am often told that if they are stored in a cool place and packaged in a tightly sealed container, they might make it to four years. I prefer for things to last longer than that. There is one more problem to contend with; they only work once, and then you have trash.
UV Paqlite https://www.uvpaqlite.com/ is an innovative company that has some ideas about how to deal with these problems. We have reviewed some of their products before, so I am mainly going to focus on some of the new ones introduced since the last review, but I will take a quick look at the whole product line.
I should first say that UV Paqlite is most well known for their use of strontium aluminate crystals– a fascinating material that absorbs electromagnetic radiation and ultra violet rays and then returns them to us as light. The really fantastic thing about these crystals is that they can charge in relatively low light and then remain visible for up to 24 hours. UV Paqlite has come up with a number of very useful ways to use the abilities of these crystals.
When you first charge the crystals up, they seem really bright, but they fade a bit pretty quickly. They aren’t a Surefire flashlight by any means, but they retain enough light emitting ability to be able to find things in the dark from dusk to dawn, much like one of the long-life glow sticks. I was initially disappointed when I ran into our darkest closet with them, but I realized that my eyes were not dark adapted. Once that happens, the UV Paqlites really show their stuff. I tried an assortment of their products on a Cub Scout campout. When I got up before dawn for a call of nature, I was pleased to be able to find everything I had attached them to without needing to wake anyone up with a flashlight.
Source: http://survivalblog.com/scots-product-review-the-orb-and-uv-paqlite/
