Materials Sparklight

Name:
Sparklight

Description:
Usually a solid, opaque, glowing block or shape of a hard light material (connected to a hard light emitter). The material flakes very easily to the point where just running a finger across its surface will leave a coloured trail on your hand which smells faintly of garlic. When struck against a hard surface like asphalt or metal the material will shoot out sparks that emit silent “popping” sounds as they fizzle away. These are usually mounted on hoverboards, hover skates et cetera in order to make stunts and tricks involving scraping against a surface more impressive. The substance comes in a variety of colours too and you can just as easily acquire standard yellow sparks as you can find green, purple or red. It all depends on the type of cartridge you slot into the emitter.

(An example of what it would look like in theory as it grinds across a solid surface.)


Abilities:

• The substance will glow quite brightly by standard, similar to a low strength LED lamp. When emitting sparks the light level jumps up to an LED light of medium power.
• Using a hard light emitter the substance can regenerate itself.
• The sparks are not hot enough to light flammable material on fire.

Limitations:

• The substance will periodically need to have their hard light cartridges replaced as the hard light is used up. However a standard cartridge usually contains around six months worth of frequent use.
• A person should be careful around the substance whilst it is emitting sparks as it may lead to light burns on exposed skin with extended contact.
• If the hard light is rubbed against clothes it may leave hard to remove stains.
• The substance is very soft and prone to fracturing. It can survive scraping just fine (as that is what it is built for and it uses the hard light emitters as extra support to keep steady) but if mounted in, let’s say a blade, when struck it will almost instantly (and very impressively) shatter into sparks and fragments.

How does it work?:
The material is an almost exact copy of standard hard light, though many elements that increase structural integrity are intentionally cut in order to make the substance both lighter and easier to flake off. In addition to this the material takes the nanoscopic shape similar to graphite to allow layers to easily flake off. With the inclusion of phosphorous and other artificial colouring materials the substance will spark when it is struck against a solid surface. As the material flakes off and the flakes ping away they thusly end up burning up in a bright flash. When scraped this usually means a lot of sparks will fly off, giving the appearance of a bright, almost cloud-like mass of lights trailing the source.

Flavour text:
Sparklight has several different iterations of varying strength, durability et cetera. Some emit more sparks, some are brighter, some focus on lasting far too long on a single cartridge. Though all placed under the title of “sparklight”, there are roughly 250 different patents on the galactic market of different ways to manufacture sparklight-like materials. Meteor shower, Solar wind INC and ARMAGEDDON™ are the three most common manufacturers and produce a variety of hobbyist hoverboards and trick equipment.

Referenced Technologies:
Faux hard light

Attainability:
Open
There are a variety of manufacturers and the material is really easy for almost anyone to get their hands on, though usually if someone wants just the emitter they may have to dissect a hover board or pair of skates.

Tags:
Civilian
Due to its fragility it has almost no purpose within industrial settings (apart from maybe lighting but that's a stretch), some military ground vehicles may carry the material for intimidation but this is incredibly rare.

Category:
Materials

 

I would assume not as hard light requires an active energy input in order to glow. Potentially if you get the stain whilst the sparklight is active it could glow for a few seconds. After that I'd imagine at most it'd be a light phosphoresence (akin to really weak glow in the dark paint) or none at all.