thanks Todd

My vague memory was that different types of lead fouresced differently, and
I'm not surprised that uranium-containing minerals also reacted in this way.

cheers

Denis
----- Original Message -----
From: "Todd Hanson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 6:12 AM
Subject: Re: Glass that flouresces


> Denis,
>
> Being from a place that has a special interest and expertise in
> radioactive materials, I can offer some information, but perhaps not
> all of what you may be looking for. I'm no glass guru.
>
> Uranium comes in the form of several hundred types of
> uranium-containing minerals, but it appears most widely in minerals
> like metatorbernite, autunite, carnotite, and uraninite
> (pitchblende). The first principal uses of uranium oxides in industry
> were as pigments for ceramic glazes and  the yellow-green fluorescent
> glass like Miodownik found. The correlation he makes is strong, but
> since not all uranium minerals fluoresce and a number of other
> non-radioactive minerals do (such as lead), to some degree one could
> argue that Miodownik's quest was perhaps futile if he truly tied
> fluorescence to radioactivity.
>
> If he was looking for uranium glass, I think he might just as well
> have been looking for yellow-colored glass.
>
> Todd
>
>
>
>>Hi all
>>
>>A bit of a trivia question.
>>
>>Attached is a link to Nature News, the chatty gee-whizz stories from
>>the august journal Nature.  This one is about a materials scientist
>>who is creating a reference collection of unusual materials [many
>>weird synthetics].  It contains the following paragraphs:
>>
>>'Miodownik trawls the globe in search of additions to his
>>collection. On a recent trip to Australia, he found himself in the
>>remote uranium-mining town of Broken Hill in New South Wales. He
>>started hunting through antique shops there to find a special type
>>of glass.
>>
>>'Miodownik explains that in the early twentieth century people
>>thought that radioactive materials had beneficial health properties.
>>For this reason, they manufactured glassware containing uranium,
>>especially in places such as Broken Hill that had an abundance of
>>the element.
>>
>>'In the Australian antique shops, Miodownik flashed an ultraviolet
>>light on various glass pieces to find one that glowed, a sign that
>>it contained uranium. When he found a bowl that did just that, he
>>brought it back to London and added it to the library.
>>
>>[full link - http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050328/full/050328-5.html]
>>
>>Apart from the small matter of Broken Hill mining silver, lead and
>>zinc and no appreciable uranium, nor being a notable decorative
>>glass manufacturing centre, I was wondering from some of the many
>>glass gurus on the list what added elements cause flourescence such
>>as described.  Was Dr Miodownik's bargain hunting futile?
>>
>>cheers
>>
>>Denis
>
>
> --
> Todd A. Hanson
> Curator
> Bradbury Science Museum
> Los Alamos National Laboratory
> Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545
> (505) 665-2085
> [log in to unmask]
>
>