![Still glows some 25 years later! -[ #FlickrFriday ]- | by Carbon Arc](http://live.staticflickr.com/630/21185668969_2a71f485c5.jpg)
Still glows some 25 years later! -[ #FlickrFriday ]-
#IMadeThis neon* tube circa 1990 in a workshop at the Crafts Center at UC San Diego, a program which was in operation from 1972 until its shutdown in 2012 due to budgetary issues, and whose facility was deemed too expensive to bring up to modern codes and thus demolished in 2015. Even though the workmanship is not up to professional standards (many years of practice is necessary to be able to bend tubing evenly), this tube has held up quite well in storage for decades.
*Technically, this tube is not filed with its namesake gas (whose color the workshop instructor called “No-Vacancy Red” in a reference to old motel signs), but rather with argon gas and a tiny drop of mercury. Argon by itself glows a pale violet; the mercury vaporizes to generate the bright blue glow you see here.
Still glows some 25 years later! -[ #FlickrFriday ]-
#IMadeThis neon* tube circa 1990 in a workshop at the Crafts Center at UC San Diego, a program which was in operation from 1972 until its shutdown in 2012 due to budgetary issues, and whose facility was deemed too expensive to bring up to modern codes and thus demolished in 2015. Even though the workmanship is not up to professional standards (many years of practice is necessary to be able to bend tubing evenly), this tube has held up quite well in storage for decades.
*Technically, this tube is not filed with its namesake gas (whose color the workshop instructor called “No-Vacancy Red” in a reference to old motel signs), but rather with argon gas and a tiny drop of mercury. Argon by itself glows a pale violet; the mercury vaporizes to generate the bright blue glow you see here.