Hi any questions you have about EL Wire will be answered here but heres a bit of info about it :

EL Wire is very bright glowing wire that comes in all colours and can be between 1.3mm and 8mm thick

the standard sizes are 1.3mm 'angel hair', 2.3mm, 3.2mm, 5mm and sometimes 8mm

It needs batteries or some way to power it (mains or USB) and then a driver/inverter to make it glow

EL Wire has a copper wire in its core - this is then painted with 'Electro-Luminescent' paint

This EL paint is very similar to glow-in-the-dark paint except EL paint glows when it is exposed to an electric field

Surrounding this copper wire that has EL paint around it are two VERY thin wires

These thin wires attach to the positive coming from the driver/inverter and the central copper wire will be wired up to the negative

(because it is an Alternating Current coming from the inverter it doesnt actually make a difference if its wired to the positive or negative)

The copper core, EL Paint and thin electrtical wires are held inside a  clear protective plastic tube which can then be coated with coloured tubing to change the colour of the glow

EL wire design is a very similar same setup as coaxial cable and i always think its weird that the copper wire and the thin electrical wires don't ever meet or touch and no circuit is made between them - in fact if it does then the wire will fail at this point

So the glow isn't made by a current running through and making a curcuit lighting up the wire (like in an LED) but because the copper wire and the thin electrical wires are holding a charge like a capacitor

This is why EL Wire is so energy efficient and it is only the efficiency of the inverter that will cause any power drain - so remember to use decent inverters!

The Electro-Luminescent paint likes a voltage of around 100V to glow (and a frequency of 500 - 1000Htz)

most power inputs are 3v (2 X AA batteries) or 12V so the driver has to 'invert' the voltage up to 100V

The EL Paint glows a light blue colour and any other colour has to be made by putting different coloured plastic tubing round it.

Red is the hardest colour to make from the blue so turns out to be a lot less bright than the blue

Well i hope that helps with finding out how all this works - please leave any comments or questions