In 1989 I took over an optical laboratory at the Navel Weapons Center, China Lake. The previous occupant was a hoarder, and the rooms and hallways were stacked to the ceiling with equipment and material he had acquired from DRMO, the entity that coordinates the excessing and sale to the general public of cast off and done with government stuff. Any DoD employee could waltz in to DRMO and transfer material to their activity, they being the custodian. It took me several months to clear all that junk out, having to go through the DRMO process again, or the equally POA recycle process. There was at least a ton of optical glass, which must have been hideously expensive to buy. But without melt data and other info, it was worthless. In one cabinet I came across some extremely dense glass - I recognized it must be uranium oxide optical flint. The density was over 5 g/cm3, some over 6. It was yellow tinted, kind of a dingy look. And the index and dispersion was off the chart - it had a faint metallic luster even. I assume the uranium content was pretty high as they caused a strong detector response. Nobody would take it. Well, it did get carted away by industrial hygiene, and who knows what they did with it. Many years later a rad team was milling around the lab doing something, and they by chance detected something pretty hot in one of my back patio cabinets. It was hot enough to zing their detectors from 30 feet away as they walked back and forth. When they realized something was up they ran it down, opened then quickly shut the cabinet, and put up some barrier tape and red tagged the door. A real nuclear physicist was brought on and he said the signature was Strontium something or other, and it all came from a little 2" diameter test article. He had no idea what it was for. Many years later I ran into one of the scientists that worked with it. As I related the incident his eyes lit up! The article has a highly irradiated optical thin film coating - back in the day that was tried as a way to increase laser damage thresholds, the irradiation producing color centers that "pinned" the crystal lattice. That thing was dangerously radioactive, but the case had no warnings or indication of radioactivity, ah, the good old Star Wars days.
"Meh. I know about Uranium glass. It's a Science TH-camr staple." *3 minutes later* "Okie dokie. I know dick about Uranium glass. My apologies. Please continue, professor." Very comprehensive. Cheers.
I only recently found out about Uranium glass. Last week I was in a large, well-stocked local antique/flea/2nd hand store. One booth had a huge cabinet full of this, lit by black-light and glowing the most gorgeous shade of green. That started me researching and ... long story short, I found your channel. :)
Extremely thorough and well done as usual. I didn't think I was going to learn anything new when I clicked, just an enjoyable video, but honestly I've never even heard of "gemstone glass" that contains uranium but DOESN'T fluoresce! The iron or whatever must be acting as a quenching agent to suppress the U fluorescence. An old paper states that rather than changing it to a nonradiative transition, the fluorescence is actually shifted into the IR by the Fe. Might be interesting to take a look at with night vision goggles or something similar. I suppose this is the origin of the 'everything that's radioactive glows green' trope in fiction, even though virtually nothing in reality actually does (save for radium lume, which I suppose may also be the meme's origin).
I think you did a previous video on this subject, I remember thinking I should see if the pieces of green depression glass I had inherited were uranium glass. At the time I didn’t have an easy way to check them. Recently I got a new flashlight with a UV feature so when you posted this video I decided to test my pieces. Turns out all of the depression glass I have is uranium ! So a big THANK YOU for this video. It really looks beautiful alit with UV light.
You are very welcome! And yes: I did make a previous video on the subject, but I am steadily remaking all the videos I made before I got proper sound and camera equipment to bring everything up to the same level of quality.
Last year I discovered uranium glass and determined I must have some. I found a nice, but not perfect, orange juicer with the 'cone' in the middle, and am quite happy. Recently I was looking for replacement bug zapper UV bulbs, and decided to give some UV LED's a try; wow, they work super good, and my juicer looks very cool under the LED UV light. Thank you OOD for the history lesson, comprehensive as usual.
I was about to look this up, I thought there must be a non destructive method. Is this the same as X-ray spectroscopy? The sample doesn't even have to be radioactive, it's used to find lead among other things.
@@davidg4288 In this application you look for the gamma emissions from the various unstable isotopes in the glass and "sort" them by energy to get a gamma spectrum. You do not use an external X-ray source or the like.
@@davidg4288X-ray and Gamma spectroscopy are similar, though they differ in origin. For X-ray spectroscopy, an external radiation source is directed at the subject. The ionizing rays from the source cause k shell electrons to be ejected from deep in the sample's inner orbitals. Electrons from the outer orbitals will then fall in and take its place, these drops have a very specific difference in kinetic energy, and thus emit an X-ray with an energy specific to the element from the sample. On the other hand, gamma spectroscopy simply detects the ionizing rays being emitted from radionuclides as they settle down after a decay. The protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom have orbitals similar to electrons. After most radioisotopes decay, some of the lower nucleon orbitals are usually left unoccupied. This causes a higher orbital proton or neutron to drop down, emitting a gamma ray in the process. These gamma rays are mostly the same as X-rays, but usually have higher energy. Just as with the X-ray fluorescence from the previous example, the gamma rays emitted from atoms de-exciting have characteristic energies that can be used to identify the isotope that made them. In both cases, a spectroscope is used to identify the element/isotope. A spectroscope is a type of radiation detector that can count photons and organize them by their energy. By organizing them in this way, it is possible not just to see total activity, but how much of the activity comes from different energy levels of the radiation. By outputting the reading as a graph, it becomes possible to visibly identify the subject's composition.
its safe until ground down to dust and breathed in. it emits alpha particles which don't penetrate skin but do penetrate mucus membranes inside the body. so unless you get it inside you its harmless
Very good video, up to the point where you said "there's no single, 100% foolproof method for finding Uranium glass, other that breaking off a piece and passing it through a mass spectrometer". I disagree, because you can use gamma spectroscopy to identify the exact element, and isotope thereof, that you have. Here's a video where a person uses spectroscopy to tell Thorium glass apart from Uranium glass: th-cam.com/video/UGzhQesU2R4/w-d-xo.html Now, I have no way of knowing whether this Thorium glass is really the same as the Cerium glass you mentioned. But in any case, the reason why it's possible to use gamma spectroscopy to identify alpha emitters like U-238, U-235 and Th-232, is of course that they have decay chains that _do_ emit gamma radiation. And since the decay chains are distinct, and well-understood, you identify the "upstream" alpha emitter by the specific decay products that happen to emit gamma radiation at different energies.
Thanks for the note; it made me realize I didn't get my actual point across very clearly. What I was trying to say was that there is no foolproof method available to the average person, and was using mass spectrometry as an example of an assay method that (like gamma spectroscopy) relatively few people have access to. Sorry for the confusion.
@@CanadianMacGyver That's a fair point. But I think simple gamma spectrometres can now be had for cheap on Amazon. The complexity probably lies in having to interpret a graph on a computer or tablet and figure out what the various spikes mean.
@@CanadianMacGyvernot to rude, but if there was sufficient amount of uranium present in any glassware, wouldn't it be possible to test the presence using Archimedes's method of calculating the density and comparing against the supposed theoretical density if uranium was indeed present. Although it shouldn't be hard to perform the test with basic tools and some calculations, I believe it would still be very hard if the uranium content happens to be really low compared to the glass content. Also, I apologize for commenting on an older video. The subject and the discussion are definitely very in quality, hence I couldn't help but propose this solution that I had in mind.
@@CanadianMacGyver I actively hunt and collect Uranium glass as well as other radioactive items and glass. Depending on what you consider the average person has access to, it is very easy for the ordinary person to 100% pick out any Uranium glass from the junk. A combination of an ordinary geiger counter with a 365nm black light with a UV black filter will pick out all Uranium glass. The more sensitive the geiger counter the better, but most are more than capable. All Uranium glass is radioactive and detectable even with a gamma only geiger counter. A mylar window or pancake tube counter is a lot better. Most Uranium glass will glow under UV light. I have seen some rare examples of Uranium glass that doesn't. There is also Thorium glass which is radioactive and doesn't glow but this is very easy to identify. Most people are familiar with it's use in camera lenses but there is a range of brownish yellow glassware which is made with Thorium. The green glow is rather distinctive and it is very rare to find a questionable weak green glow from Uranium. It is Manganese Glass that is often mistaken for Uranium glass and glows with a weaker green than Uranium glass. The same for Iron glass and it is even weaker. If there is any doubt, the combination of the geiger counter and the black light 100% seals the deal. No counts and no distinct bright green glow and that's not Uranium glass. Some Uranium glass doesn't contain a lot of Uranium and the counts can be low but there is no mistaking them from background radiation. The cheaper counters can miss them. Their glow may also be weaker under UV light but again, there is no mistaking the bright green colour even if it is not as bright as a good piece of custard glass. The amount a piece glows almost always reflects how radioactive it is.
@@CanadianMacGyver I'd suggest using a Radiacode 101, 102, or 103 to do a simple isotope identification spectroscopy. The device can pair to a smart phone and is very reliable. It's actually pretty cheap compared to limited geiger counters out there so it's actually a very interesting alternative.
Do a comprehensive history of military balloons. Also I collect broken uranium glass and rework it I like the look more than the modern UV the sell for lampworkers.
Very nice video. No bright flashing colors, no loud music, no yelling, no video effect, just pure content. Thanks!
In 1989 I took over an optical laboratory at the Navel Weapons Center, China Lake. The previous occupant was a hoarder, and the rooms and hallways were stacked to the ceiling with equipment and material he had acquired from DRMO, the entity that coordinates the excessing and sale to the general public of cast off and done with government stuff. Any DoD employee could waltz in to DRMO and transfer material to their activity, they being the custodian.
It took me several months to clear all that junk out, having to go through the DRMO process again, or the equally POA recycle process. There was at least a ton of optical glass, which must have been hideously expensive to buy. But without melt data and other info, it was worthless. In one cabinet I came across some extremely dense glass - I recognized it must be uranium oxide optical flint. The density was over 5 g/cm3, some over 6. It was yellow tinted, kind of a dingy look. And the index and dispersion was off the chart - it had a faint metallic luster even. I assume the uranium content was pretty high as they caused a strong detector response.
Nobody would take it. Well, it did get carted away by industrial hygiene, and who knows what they did with it. Many years later a rad team was milling around the lab doing something, and they by chance detected something pretty hot in one of my back patio cabinets. It was hot enough to zing their detectors from 30 feet away as they walked back and forth. When they realized something was up they ran it down, opened then quickly shut the cabinet, and put up some barrier tape and red tagged the door. A real nuclear physicist was brought on and he said the signature was Strontium something or other, and it all came from a little 2" diameter test article. He had no idea what it was for. Many years later I ran into one of the scientists that worked with it. As I related the incident his eyes lit up! The article has a highly irradiated optical thin film coating - back in the day that was tried as a way to increase laser damage thresholds, the irradiation producing color centers that "pinned" the crystal lattice. That thing was dangerously radioactive, but the case had no warnings or indication of radioactivity, ah, the good old Star Wars days.
"Meh. I know about Uranium glass. It's a Science TH-camr staple."
*3 minutes later*
"Okie dokie. I know dick about Uranium glass. My apologies. Please continue, professor."
Very comprehensive. Cheers.
I only recently found out about Uranium glass. Last week I was in a large, well-stocked local antique/flea/2nd hand store. One booth had a huge cabinet full of this, lit by black-light and glowing the most gorgeous shade of green. That started me researching and ... long story short, I found your channel. :)
The same exact thing is what happened to me, word for word. I bought my wife some, it is beautiful especially under a an ultraviolet black light.
For anyone interested in glass and the history of glass making. There is a small but really cool museum of glass in New Bedford MA, USA.
Extremely thorough and well done as usual. I didn't think I was going to learn anything new when I clicked, just an enjoyable video, but honestly I've never even heard of "gemstone glass" that contains uranium but DOESN'T fluoresce! The iron or whatever must be acting as a quenching agent to suppress the U fluorescence. An old paper states that rather than changing it to a nonradiative transition, the fluorescence is actually shifted into the IR by the Fe. Might be interesting to take a look at with night vision goggles or something similar. I suppose this is the origin of the 'everything that's radioactive glows green' trope in fiction, even though virtually nothing in reality actually does (save for radium lume, which I suppose may also be the meme's origin).
Arguably a more reasonable use of Uranium.
I think you did a previous video on this subject, I remember thinking I should see if the pieces of green depression glass I had inherited were uranium glass. At the time I didn’t have an easy way to check them. Recently I got a new flashlight with a UV
feature so when you posted this video I decided to test my pieces. Turns out all of the depression glass I have is uranium !
So a big THANK YOU for this video. It really looks beautiful alit with UV light.
You are very welcome! And yes: I did make a previous video on the subject, but I am steadily remaking all the videos I made before I got proper sound and camera equipment to bring everything up to the same level of quality.
@@CanadianMacGyver Thanks again, I really enjoy your “Cabinet of Curiosities” series.
We seem to have a lot of common interest’s
Last year I discovered uranium glass and determined I must have some. I found a nice, but not perfect, orange juicer with the 'cone' in the middle, and am quite happy. Recently I was looking for replacement bug zapper UV bulbs, and decided to give some UV LED's a try; wow, they work super good, and my juicer looks very cool under the LED UV light. Thank you OOD for the history lesson, comprehensive as usual.
Thanks for the presentation.
I've been collecting ug for decades .. I'm more concerned about the uv lighting I've installed , the glass is safe.
Gamma spectroscopy can be used to determine if it really is Uranium glass. It is even non destructive.☺️
I was about to look this up, I thought there must be a non destructive method. Is this the same as X-ray spectroscopy? The sample doesn't even have to be radioactive, it's used to find lead among other things.
@@davidg4288 In this application you look for the gamma emissions from the various unstable isotopes in the glass and "sort" them by energy to get a gamma spectrum. You do not use an external X-ray source or the like.
@@davidg4288X-ray and Gamma spectroscopy are similar, though they differ in origin. For X-ray spectroscopy, an external radiation source is directed at the subject. The ionizing rays from the source cause k shell electrons to be ejected from deep in the sample's inner orbitals. Electrons from the outer orbitals will then fall in and take its place, these drops have a very specific difference in kinetic energy, and thus emit an X-ray with an energy specific to the element from the sample.
On the other hand, gamma spectroscopy simply detects the ionizing rays being emitted from radionuclides as they settle down after a decay. The protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom have orbitals similar to electrons. After most radioisotopes decay, some of the lower nucleon orbitals are usually left unoccupied. This causes a higher orbital proton or neutron to drop down, emitting a gamma ray in the process. These gamma rays are mostly the same as X-rays, but usually have higher energy. Just as with the X-ray fluorescence from the previous example, the gamma rays emitted from atoms de-exciting have characteristic energies that can be used to identify the isotope that made them.
In both cases, a spectroscope is used to identify the element/isotope. A spectroscope is a type of radiation detector that can count photons and organize them by their energy. By organizing them in this way, it is possible not just to see total activity, but how much of the activity comes from different energy levels of the radiation. By outputting the reading as a graph, it becomes possible to visibly identify the subject's composition.
is it safe to be in the home? and is it always color green/ greenish yellow?
its safe until ground down to dust and breathed in. it emits alpha particles which don't penetrate skin but do penetrate mucus membranes inside the body. so unless you get it inside you its harmless
Have you seen the folks out there that will facet broken glass into gemstone shapes? I bet uranium glass would look awesome.
0:00 What's the name of this tune again? I've forgotten and it's bugging me.
Should be the overture for "Pictures at an Exhibition" by Modest Mussorgsky.
9:16 😎Nice
Can’t you use and X-ray spectrometer to determine if uranium is present? Or is none of the uranium at the surface?
Very good video, up to the point where you said "there's no single, 100% foolproof method for finding Uranium glass, other that breaking off a piece and passing it through a mass spectrometer". I disagree, because you can use gamma spectroscopy to identify the exact element, and isotope thereof, that you have. Here's a video where a person uses spectroscopy to tell Thorium glass apart from Uranium glass:
th-cam.com/video/UGzhQesU2R4/w-d-xo.html
Now, I have no way of knowing whether this Thorium glass is really the same as the Cerium glass you mentioned.
But in any case, the reason why it's possible to use gamma spectroscopy to identify alpha emitters like U-238, U-235 and Th-232, is of course that they have decay chains that _do_ emit gamma radiation. And since the decay chains are distinct, and well-understood, you identify the "upstream" alpha emitter by the specific decay products that happen to emit gamma radiation at different energies.
Thanks for the note; it made me realize I didn't get my actual point across very clearly. What I was trying to say was that there is no foolproof method available to the average person, and was using mass spectrometry as an example of an assay method that (like gamma spectroscopy) relatively few people have access to. Sorry for the confusion.
@@CanadianMacGyver That's a fair point. But I think simple gamma spectrometres can now be had for cheap on Amazon. The complexity probably lies in having to interpret a graph on a computer or tablet and figure out what the various spikes mean.
@@CanadianMacGyvernot to rude, but if there was sufficient amount of uranium present in any glassware, wouldn't it be possible to test the presence using Archimedes's method of calculating the density and comparing against the supposed theoretical density if uranium was indeed present. Although it shouldn't be hard to perform the test with basic tools and some calculations, I believe it would still be very hard if the uranium content happens to be really low compared to the glass content. Also, I apologize for commenting on an older video. The subject and the discussion are definitely very in quality, hence I couldn't help but propose this solution that I had in mind.
@@CanadianMacGyver I actively hunt and collect Uranium glass as well as other radioactive items and glass.
Depending on what you consider the average person has access to, it is very easy for the ordinary person to 100% pick out any Uranium glass from the junk.
A combination of an ordinary geiger counter with a 365nm black light with a UV black filter will pick out all Uranium glass. The more sensitive the geiger counter the better, but most are more than capable.
All Uranium glass is radioactive and detectable even with a gamma only geiger counter. A mylar window or pancake tube counter is a lot better. Most Uranium glass will glow under UV light. I have seen some rare examples of Uranium glass that doesn't. There is also Thorium glass which is radioactive and doesn't glow but this is very easy to identify. Most people are familiar with it's use in camera lenses but there is a range of brownish yellow glassware which is made with Thorium.
The green glow is rather distinctive and it is very rare to find a questionable weak green glow from Uranium.
It is Manganese Glass that is often mistaken for Uranium glass and glows with a weaker green than Uranium glass. The same for Iron glass and it is even weaker. If there is any doubt, the combination of the geiger counter and the black light 100% seals the deal.
No counts and no distinct bright green glow and that's not Uranium glass.
Some Uranium glass doesn't contain a lot of Uranium and the counts can be low but there is no mistaking them from background radiation. The cheaper counters can miss them. Their glow may also be weaker under UV light but again, there is no mistaking the bright green colour even if it is not as bright as a good piece of custard glass.
The amount a piece glows almost always reflects how radioactive it is.
@@CanadianMacGyver I'd suggest using a Radiacode 101, 102, or 103 to do a simple isotope identification spectroscopy. The device can pair to a smart phone and is very reliable. It's actually pretty cheap compared to limited geiger counters out there so it's actually a very interesting alternative.
Uranium fever!
Is this depression glass?
It is killing me that i cannot name the into song.
It's the "Promenade" theme from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition".
Also in boxes of laundry soap. Question, how do you pronounce your name?
Black light
Do a comprehensive history of military balloons. Also I collect broken uranium glass and rework it I like the look more than the modern UV the sell for lampworkers.
Arguably a more reasonable use of Uranium.