What I Learned Today

[Rock Steady]

Originally Posted by barefoot serpent

I learned that those novelty glow-in-the-dark coackroaches from toy stores will begin to melt plastic objects that you leave them on over time. Apparently the beta particles from Radium decay are sufficient to breakdown the atomic structure of plastics.

No, glow-in-the-dark products do not contain radioactive materials.

phosphorescence, in which the energy from absorbed photons undergoes intersystem crossing into a state of higher spin multiplicity (see term symbol), usually a triplet state. Once the energy is trapped in the triplet state, transition back to the lower singlet energy states is quantum mechanically forbidden, meaning that it happens much more slowly than other transitions. The result is a slow process of radiative transition back to the singlet state, sometimes lasting minutes or hours. This is the basis for "glow in the dark" substances.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoluminescence

Only photons are radiated in these products.

As for the meltdown, some plastics can be dissolvers of other plastics.