Have you ever heard of rocks and minerals that glow? There are around 4,000 different minerals-approximately 15% of them are known to glow.Well why?Impurities in the mineral (usually) cause this fluorescense that is brought out under UV light. Well for what can one use these glowing features? What can you use it for except for an hobby of collceting them and stare at them?
Well the phosphors used in fluorescent tube lamps and CRTs use the same principle, though the specific salts used may be made artificially rather than being just mined. Fluorescence in general is used quite widely: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescence But I can't think, offhand, of applications of the fluorescence of naturally occurring minerals.
Have some Uranium oxide it will glow but eventually it will get to you , Think about the glowing watches in the past were women got cancer by handling the glowing material UO2 and liking their fingers.
Yes, this is radioluminescence, a subset of fluorescence caused by the products of decay of a radioisotope exciting electrons in a suitable material:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioluminescence But most fluorescent minerals are quite safe.
Well, to be more accurate, I believe that was actually radium. It was a very common practice and the "licking" was applied to the the tip of the brush to keep it well-pointed, not the fingers themselves except to use them to twist the tip of the brush.
Yes I have read about Promethium and Radium which were used in self-luminous clocks ,but were stoped useing it because too many watch factory workers had died of it. but if you were to extract the fluorescence (or melt it down into an other shapes) would it keep its fluorescence.
Suggest reading this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_paint The key thing is that radioluminous paint needs 2 things: a radioisotope releasing β-particles, and a "phosphor". The latter is the fluorescent substance, whose electrons are excited by the radioactive particles and then emit visible light as they return to the ground state. In radium-based paints it was silver-doped ZnS, apparently. So, when you speak of "extracting the fluorescence", you have to think about a process that does not chemically alter the phosphor. The radioisotope's contribution is from nuclear decay, which will not be affected by any chemical process. To answer your question for a specific case, one would need to know what phosphor is in use and then attempt to predict how this might be affected by the extraction process you have in mind. I'm not saying I would necessarily know the answer - it might need specialist knowledge.
Very interesting and something for me to keep in mind, but my main focus is the Illumines that the minerals give of when you put them under UV light. I have an idea to make some thing like a brick that has letters and numbers on it that glows when you put it under UV. I want to know if I take the impurities (the glowing parts) and extract that and reshape it ,will the impurity be affected. If you would look into glowing rocks you'll get an idea of the minerals that I'm talking about, because I was abit unclear about what fluorescence I meant.
Ah, OK, I'm with you now. If I were you I think I's avoid any extraction technique that involves either melting or dissolving and recrystallising, because in many cases the fluorescence arises from impurities in the crystal structure, which would be removed or at least reduced by recrystallising the mineral. So in general I'd stick to embedding particles of mineral extracted by some purely physical process. But there are exceptions to this I think, in which a pure substance exhibits fluorescence. If it is one of these then presumably recrystallising would not destroy the fluorescence.
OK that makes sence.There are 4 types of wayse the minerals emit light thermoluminescence (heat) triboluminescence (friction or crushing) fluorescence (UV light ) phosphorescence (After being in UV light) Well I read about these and the thermoluminescence. "In some minerals, they will glow only once during heating and then never glow again. This is because the excited electrons were trapped in a higher state during crystallization and only when heated were they allowed to lower their energy state by emitting the photons of light." Ok so if I were to grind it into a powder insted of melting or dissolving it, would it still glow if I mix the fluorescence powder into a resin compound to "reshape" it
I don't see why not. After all, grinding simply breaks the crystals into smaller pieces. Sounds like a nice idea - I hope it works.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!thx I'll post a pic of it when I'm done so you can see but I'll send you vis msg when you can check it out . you realy gave me a broder view of the aproch to my projectPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
