Talk:Invisible ink/Archive 1

Archive 1

2003 comment

No, invisible ink pens do tend to have two tips, one for encoding and one for decoding. I think the cover message is typically done with another pen. --Daniel C. Boyer 16:38 22 Jul 2003 (UTC)

2008 comment

I was wondering if someone can help with the following. Im looking to see if anyone knows of an ink, or a company to refer me to which does what I am looking for. I am looking for an ink which when it comes in contact with another chemical or stimulant is invisble until oxgyne hits the compound. For instance, if you take a sealed bubble which has ink within it on the bottom and some sort of checmical on top. When that bubble is put in a vacum sealer, they come togtherr in an airless eviorment. When the vacuum sealed bag is open and air infiltrates the broken bubble the ink which has now been mixed becomes visible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by StackNY (talk • contribs) 13:28, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

IUPAC spelling

Multiple changes of sulphate to sulfate are a BE to AE conversion, which WP discourages. WP policy is to let BE and AE flourish. Probably should be reverted. ww 15:57, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No, it's a conversion from the old, archaic spelling, to the spelling recommended by the IUPAC.

Darrien 00:13, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

And colour -> color? Never mind ;-) — Matt 00:32, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Considering colour redirects to color and the MoS says: "Each article should have uniform spelling and not a haphazard mix of different spellings (it can be jarring to the reader). In particular, for individual words and word-endings. For example, don't use center (American) in one place and fibre (British) in another".

If it makes you feel better, the IUPAC recommends Aluminium and Caesium, so you Brits have two out of three. Humor also redirects to humour.

Darrien 01:40, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

Oops, I was just joking about "colour" -> "color"; sorry to have put you to the effort of digging out the Manual of Style ;-) I'm curious; is using IUPAC names now official policy on WP? — Matt 02:07, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It's not an "official" policy, yet. It's more of an unwritten rule that anyone who contributes to chemistry related articles uses the IUPAC spelling. We've never had a problem with it yet, though I'm going to suggest it become an official policy to avoid disputes.

Darrien 05:13, 2004 Jul 20 (UTC)

I am wondering to see if there is any kind of invisible ink experiment that is possible to work on as a project.

Picture

Can someone post a picture of invisible ink? Maybe an animated gif of invisible ink in action. Such as: the application, fading, fading, fading, gone. Wuffyz

But that isn't how it works. Most if not all invisible inks are already invisible, or very nearly so, when applied. There is nothing to photograph but a blank piece of paper. Possibly you could do your animated gif of ink re-appearing when the developer is applied, but in most cases, the process is practically instantaneous. One possible exception is heat sensitive organic inks that "develop" by charring slightly in heat. Very careful regulation of the heat source can drag the development of these inks out over a few seconds. Possibly someone might like to make an animated gif of that? The other thing you could do, perhaps, is slowly spray reagent across a paper to bring out the message a few letters at a time. -- Securiger (talk) 01:47, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Disappearing ink redirects to invisible ink

Disappearing ink redirects to invisible ink, and this seems not correct since the target of invisible ink is to make the message readable for the trained person, however the target of disappearing ink is to make the message visible during the creation and as long as possible (several days possible) after, but to become as unreadable as possible then.

I agree. I suppose they were merged because the disappearing ink paragraph is a stub, and they are somewhat related in that they are both inks with time varying degrees of visibility. However those seem like weak reasons to unite such different topics. Maybe they could both be covered in a single "time varying pigments" article, but unless such an article is created this paragraph should probably be split off. -- Securiger (talk) 02:06, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes & Know ink

What ink do they use to print "Yes & Know" books ? They are revealed with a felt-tipped pen, that contains vinegar. Also, the ink printed on the paper becomes visible after many years (when the book gets old, and hasn't been exposed to the vinegar yet.

PS: When the black part (heated) of a piece of thermal paper comes in contact with vinegar/vinegar fumes, it goes white/clear. Why? How can we use that to our advantage? - Joshua Hrouda, NSW, Australia

Chemical reactions not just acid base

Our article used to say:

The invisible inks which depend on a chemical reaction generally depend on an acid-base reaction (like litmus paper) similar to the blueprint process.

I changed this to:

The invisible inks which depend on a chemical reaction may depend on an acid-base reaction (like litmus paper), reactions similar to the blueprint process, or any of hundreds of others.

There are several reasons for this. First, of our list of 15 examples of chemically developed invisible inks, only 3 use the acid-base reaction. Secondly, although 3 of our examples use a reaction similar to the blueprint process, this is not an acid-base reaction as implied by the original wording. Thirdly, there are many, many reactions which cause chemicals to change colour, and (as implied in the list of ideal properties) relying on any specific reaction is not a good idea. This is supported by our example list, in which several different mechanisms appear. -- Securiger (talk) 02:21, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Removed a Reference to USENIX?

I infrequently edit but use wikipedia a lot and always check history...Why was the reference to a paper @ USENIX removed? Was it because it was pointed to the authors' web site? How hard is it to google "Scantegrity Usenix" and click "i'm feeling lucky"? Since when did wikipedia consider references "not good enough" when academics post their publications in other venues in one spot on their website?

I changed the link to the usenix copy and reverted. Toshardin (talk) 14:13, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Windex, Achohol and Ex-lax

I have found if you crush a ex-lax tablet, mix it with rubbing achohol, write a message then when it dries blue and green windex does make the said message apear. But the message is very hard to make out. I found this in a book from my science teacher. It was called MORE SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS OF FILE.

Hours or Minutes

Article needs to elude to the duration of the message before it disappears (hours? minutes? seconds?). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.138.64.249 (talk) 01:17, 23 April 2010 (UTC)<!

In Popular Culture

Anyone up for including a pop culture section to this? I just finished reading a series by Lemony Snicket called "All The Wrong Questions" in which invisible ink plays an important role. I am sure there are dozens if not hundreds of other examples. -- Template:UnsignedIP -->

Invivicibal ink

What is a invisible ink 45.251.49.225 (talk) 13:19, 1 November 2022 (UTC)