It’s that candlelit dinner stage of the evening.   Soup through nuts, you’ve been your wonderful, genuine, self.  And he/she is pretty fantastic too.

But why take chances – this is deal clinching time.

With the table cleared, quick as a whippet you pull out your Ethereal Collapse CD, and with a flourish Newton would die for if he wasn’t already dead, guide your beloved’s eye to the spectacular demonstration of spectra by diffraction.

Your friend will by now be in a frenzy of excitement, so this is the moment to push them over the edge.

Rushing through to the restaurant kitchen with a mix of urgency and discord normally reserved for Bond movies, you thrust your CD into the light once again.  But now the disc reflects the chef’s fluorescent tube in an almost unbearably different, and extremely interesting way.  The smooth continuum of the candle flame is gone!  Now superposition bands stand proud, where line discharge spectra from gaseous mercury inside the lamp combine with the continuous spectra emitted from the phosphor coating.

At this point, you’ll almost certainly be offered complimentary Cognacs – if only to leave the kitchen.   But by now you’ll both be itching to get off anyway, back to his/her flat to repeat the experiments under controlled conditions.  Or maybe play some Scrabble.

Note: Humphry Davy was up for colour ploys (Link to ‘Humphry Davy – Finding Love in the Colourful Age of Romantic Science’)