Inventer Creates Glow-in-the-Dark Bike

Nov. 6 -- It's just about impossible not to notice Chris Niezrecki's bicycle during a nighttime visit to the University of Florida in Gainesville. That's because it glows in the dark.

Niezrecki is an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at the university, and when he first arrived on campus a couple of years ago he couldn't help but notice how many students tooled around the college town at night on their bikes.

He also couldn't help but notice that sometimes, it was hard to see them.

So he came up with a novel idea that has already set some bike manufacturers' minds spinning.

Why not, Niezrecki thought, build a bicycle that glows in the dark?

"It seemed like there was a need for something like this because it's very difficult to see bikes in the dark," he says.

Tapping Electro-Luminescence

So he teamed up with two undergraduate mechanical engineering students and set to work on the project. The team won a $16,000 grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, a six-year-old program sponsored by the Lemelson Foundation to foster the entrepreneurial spirit at colleges and universities across the country.

Students Gregory Yoder and Matthew Young were given a pretty tough challenge. The system had to be very energy efficient, and it couldn't produce heat that could harm the rider.

So they had to come up with a cold light source that could run off of two or three small batteries.

The team turned to the same technology that is used to light the face of a watch, called electro-luminescence.

"It's a basic technology," Niezrecki says. The system uses a phosphorus material, available commercially in sheets. When a low voltage current is passed across the material, the electricity excites the phosphor and causes it to emit light.

To build their glowing bike, the students cut circles out of the phosphorus material and glued them to the rims. Then they glued more of the stuff to the frame of the bike. A separate 9-volt battery supplies the current to each wheel and the frame.