would it be possible to design a white road paint that uses charged particles from cars to lite up?

see charges particles article

http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/busy-roads-have-more-charged-particles-than-power-lines-115052901082_1.html

light.

CrazyNeutrino said:

would it be possible to design a white road paint that uses charged particles from cars to lite up?

see charges particles article

http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/busy-roads-have-more-charged-particles-than-power-lines-115052901082_1.html

in practical terms? I’d say not

there’s little power in static electricity

power lines themselves have no charged particles , they can create charged particles though- it’s created a loss, though the skin effect and inducing unwanted currents in nearby metallic stuff would be a bigger loss I reckon

ChrispenEvan said:

light.

Thanks, I wondered about that.

you could have piezo electric devices powering LEDs buried in the road I suppose

the problem is that most people would never have seen proper reflective paint- the British make it, their roads light up with a brilliant response to headlights from normal vehicles , here it’s more often just white paint that disappears with rain or daylight

> would it be possible to design a white road paint that uses charged particles from cars to lite up?

Hmm, phosphors light up when hit by electrons. So I’d say yes, but probably light up very weakly. To try it out, get a dark room and let your eyes adjust to the dark. Then release ions near a phosphorescent screen such as an old-fashioned TV, computer CRT or fluorescent light and see if they light up. Perhaps the ideal would be to release ions near the inside of a broken fluorescent tube.

maybe you could have radioactive paint