Be safe, wear sunglasses... especially if you are a molecule

Single-panel cartoon featuring two stylised Singlet Oxygen Sensor Green molecules. The left molecule sports dark “blue-light-filter” sunglasses and gently scolds its partner; the right molecule, lacking shades, glows and vibrates with excitement. The dialogue plays on photophysical behaviour: without spectral filtering, the probe becomes over-excited in high-salt conditions, illustrating how ionic strength and counter-ions modulate fluorescence. Title bar, conference hashtag and award credit frame the scene, linking the joke to physical-chemistry research on photo-sensing.

This cartoon abstract was prepared for the RSCPoster 2025 submission Salts and sensing: How Ionic Strength and Counterions Affect Singlet Oxygen Sensor Green by John Vincent Malvar.