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Uranium Glass

en.wikipedia.org

41–50 of 77 posts

Re: Uranium Glass

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the crucifix is visible in the dark? This article makes it sound like a black light needed to observe the phenomenon, which strikes me as odd because I wouldn't have thought black lights were commonly available at the time when these first gained popularity.

The crucifix is different, besides the Uranium glass it has engravings painted with something I think is tritium.

That is a little scary - a bit into the territory of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

Re: Uranium Glass

#42

One of my favorite YouTube channles, Nile Red, has a cool video showing how to make Uranium Glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGw6fXprV9U

Ads every 2 minutes, host has zero personality and seems to have no real understanding of the safety issues he's dealing with. Not for me...

I think this is a very mean commentary. I usually don't feel the urge to comment, but this is a really mean commentary

Re: Uranium Glass

#43

One of my favorite YouTube channles, Nile Red, has a cool video showing how to make Uranium Glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGw6fXprV9U

Ads every 2 minutes, host has zero personality and seems to have no real understanding of the safety issues he's dealing with. Not for me...

I'd much prefer a slightly dry but genuine personality, than a hyperactive and fake "youtuber personality". The content speaks for itself. He generally takes safety pretty seriously, too.

Re: Uranium Glass

#44

One of my favorite YouTube channles, Nile Red, has a cool video showing how to make Uranium Glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGw6fXprV9U

Ads every 2 minutes, host has zero personality and seems to have no real understanding of the safety issues he's dealing with. Not for me...

YouTube premium removes ads. If you watch an hour or more of his videos you’ll realize he’s an extremely cautious creator and knows what he’s doing.

Re: Uranium Glass

#45
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's U-238, so the half-life is about 4.6 Billion years. Not totally stable, but pretty damn stable.

I don't think stable refers to the half life. It's a binary status.

Good point; it would be interesting to calculate how many atoms per second disintegrate in, say, one gram of the "relatively stable" U-238 - my guess is, quite a few!

Re: Uranium Glass

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crucifix is different, besides the Uranium glass it has engravings painted with something I think is tritium.

That is a little scary - a bit into the territory of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

Let's say that my grandmother lived in times where the radiation was too much "mainstream": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope

https://spectrum.ieee.org/fun-and-uranium-for-the-whole-fami...

and they was really close to create a world you can see in Fallout, the game:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Nucleon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device)

Re: Uranium Glass

#47

One of my favorite YouTube channles, Nile Red, has a cool video showing how to make Uranium Glass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGw6fXprV9U

He also posted a video about cleaning up on NileBlue. I appreciate the effort that goes into documenting this process - for anyone interested in working with chemicals, waste disposal is extremely important.

https://youtu.be/7ZUqSncJ5U0

Re: Uranium Glass

#48

I have some marbles and a crucifix ( that kind you hang on a wall) made of this material. I inherited them from my grandmother , the marbles was intended to be toys. The crucifix also is visible in the dark and it's the object with major emissions, but nothing dramatic. The marbles emit mostly alpha rays. Both can excite notably my Geiger counter, but, storing them in a metallic box, (i.e. that sheet metal box for bi…

Maybe your grandmother purchased them from Bob Lazar: https://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&c...

No, the color isn't the same. This is their color: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.worthp...

Re: Uranium Glass

#49
post #26

I don't see anything that indicates that this could be dangerous, so I have to assume that it is safe. I do know that pigments made from uranium oxide (bright white), in cloisonné, can be quite dangerous. Of course, radium pigments were very dangerous (not to mention the medicinal philters).

And I don't see any indication of this being safe :) It's radiation isn't it? Most of the stuff I encounter on a daily basis are much lower on the table. So there must be some differences.

These things aren't dangerous unless you grind them to dust and snort them. You're being blasted by space and earth radiation every single second of your life, the level of radiation emitted by these items isn't enough to be a problem

Re: Uranium Glass

#50
There have been quite a few photographic lenses containing radioisotopes: https://camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Radioactive_lenses

A few years ago I sent an Olympus Zuiko 55mm 1.2 to a friend in Russia. It has thorium in its glass elements. The lens didn't arrive for weeks and he started worrying whether it was lost on the way. He then was summoned by the customs authority to make a statement on the radioactive material he was importing. Turns out, during import they take a radioactivity reading on a container full of packages. This lens alone was radioactive enough to trigger the alarm for the container, and they had to make multiple readings (like in the puzzle with the coins of different weight) to find the radioactive package.

In the end, I think he had to give up the lens.

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