Neon Tubes demo · sources for the medium
The street, the shop names and the clock times are invented. What is real is how neon signs are made and what colour each gas gives; each line below matches something on screen.
| # | On screen | Source | Quoted wording |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Clear tubes filled with neon glow red-orange (the goldfish, 冰室, the hotel arrow) | Encyclopedia.com, How Products Are Made: "Neon Sign" (Chris Cavette, Paul Davis), https://www.encyclopedia.com/manufacturing/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/neon-sign | "Tubes that are to be filled with neon to form a red or orange light or argon to form a blue light are left clear." |
| 2 | Clear tubes with argon and a little mercury glow blue (the goblet, the water lines, the clock ring, ICE CAFE, GOLDFISH) | same as 1 | "a small amount of mercury is added to the argon to produce an intense blue light." |
| 2b | same, second source | Silicon Chip, Nov 1999, "Electric Lighting, Pt.15", https://www.siliconchip.com.au/Issue/1999/November/Electric+Lighting%3B+Pt.15 | "Neon is used most often in clear glass tubes, lighting up red when switched on" / "The blue discharge that occurs in the mercury/argon mixture is visible" |
| 3 | Every other colour (the cat's turquoise, pink, yellow, purple, green, white) is a phosphor-coated tube, milky white when off | Wikipedia, "Neon lighting", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neon_lighting | "the fluorescent coatings are used with an argon/mercury-vapor mixture." ; "Fluorescent coatings (phosphors) and glasses are also an option for neon tube lighting." |
| 4 | Tube diameters on screen are 1.0 to 1.9 cm | same as 3 | "The outer diameters for the glass tubing used in neon lighting ranges from 9 to 25 mm." |
| 5 | The links between strokes and the electrode ends are painted black | same as 2b | "The black-painted sections of tube are simply the connecting links between the SC letters." |
| 6 | Each sign has a transformer box beside it | same as 1 | "converts the 120 volts from the electrical lines to as much as 15,000 volts for the sign" |
Shown as stylisation, not as fact: the argon-mercury warm-up compressed to about a second (a real tube takes longer to reach full brightness); a crack that turns the glow pale violet and makes it retreat toward the electrodes; and the cat and the goldfish moving by switching one tube per pose, after the sequenced frames of animated signs.