system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why don't glow-in-the-dark objects release their stored light energy all at once?

I understand that glow-in-the-dark objects/coatings store light energy by excitation of electrons to a higher orbital, and that when the electron drops to it's base orbital it releases the energy in the form of photons. My question is, why don't the electrons all drop simultaneously when the energizing light source goes away, resulting in a single instantaneous pulse of light, and then darkness?
gpt
The light coming out of this kind of objects come from a phenomenon called phosphorescence, in which the radiative relaxation is usually much slower than fluorescence.

The main difference is that phosphorescence involves the electrons becoming trapped in certain states with such a property (spin multiplicity) that the decay to the ground state is highly improbable.

You have to keep in mind that even fluorescence is not instantaneous. The fluorescence lifetimes of most molecules lie on the nanoseconds scale. As our eyes cannot resolve such fast decays, we get the impression that it is instantaneous, but it is not.