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Attack of the glowing tomatoes

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Imagine this scenario: two blocks of wood are sitting side-by-side on a table. At first glance they seem nearly identical -- same size, same length, same type of wood -- but when the lights are flipped off, you discover that one of the blocks glows with an eerie hue. The lights are switched back on, and you're immediately asked, "which block of wood is cooler?"

"Cooler?" you ask, not quite understanding the question. "Cooler as in temperature, or... ?"

"Cooler as in most AWESOME!" the imaginary question-asker replies.

What would you answer be? More likely than not, you'll reply that the glowing block is much cooler than the non-glowing version, and with good reason -- things that glow are always cooler than things that don't. For example, glow sticks are cooler than regular sticks; glow worms are cooler than plain worms; fireflies are much, MUCH cooler than pesky old flies; and thus glowing tomatoes must be cooler than their boring, non-glowing counterparts.

If you don't believe me, I challenge you to attempt this project -- how to make a tomato glow -- and judge for yourself just how incredibly awesome a glowing (inedible) tomato really is... or you could cheat and watch the video after the jump.

Materials
  1. A box of non-safety matches
  2. Bleach
  3. A tomato
  4. Hydrogen peroxide
Tools
  1. Knife
  2. Small container
  3. Syringe
Time
Less than an hour

Steps
  1. Empty the box of matches, and use your knife to scrap off the red material on the heads of each individual match.
  2. Collect the match head shavings and place them in your container.
  3. Pour in enough bleach to completely submerge the match heads, and allow the material to fully dissolve.
  4. Let the bleach / match mixture sit for 20 minutes.
  5. After the mixture has sat for long enough, you should see two distinct layers in your container: solid on the bottom, liquid on top. Using your syringe, extract the liquid layer.
  6. Find a spot along the side of your tomato and inject some of the extracted liquid.
  7. Move over an inch and inject the tomato again.
  8. Repeat the last two steps until you've made it all the way around the tomato, and used up all of your extracted liquid.
  9. Fill the syringe with hydrogen peroxide and inject it into the center of the tomato.
  10. Continue injecting the center of the tomato until it starts to glow, or you've run out of hydrogen peroxide.
  11. Sit back and marvel at the coolest (glowing) tomato you've ever seen.

If it's not already obvious from the lethal amounts of chemicals you've just injected into your fruit, your glowing tomato should NOT be eaten. I repeat: DO NOT EAT THE TOMATO! You might be thinking to yourself, "but if I eat the glowing tomato, I'll glow, which will make me cooler!" No. You are wrong. If you eat the tomato you will die, and that's not cool.

And now, the part you've all been waiting for... the video. Enjoy!



[via Neatorama]

Tags: bleach, glow, hydrogen peroxide, HydrogenPeroxide, matches, tomato, tomatoes

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