Black light for uranium glass how to#
Black light for uranium glass full#

I actually took a cheap keychain LED flashlight and replaced the white LED with a UV one. For my money I think a UV light is worth it, but if you already have a blue LED laying around It could be worth a shot. I have had limited success with this method, though, as some types of glass will glow under the blue LEDs and some will not. Some blue LEDs shift enough into the UV spectrum to make some glass glow. UV flashlights are cheap on Amazon and can also be found at some hardware stores or even pet stores, for finding urine stains. To find uranium glass, you will need a source of UV light. We don't really need it anyway to make it work, and building this thing is what we are here to do, so we will move on.

Black light for uranium glass full#

The full history and usage of uranium glass is way beyond the scope of this Instructable.

This one is from, and this one is from Oak Ridge Associated Universities.

Black light for uranium glass how to#

There is a bit of history, as well as information about how to find it and safety concerns, in case you worry about having uranium just laying around the house. If you are curious, here are a couple of links that I found particularly interesting. There are quite a few folks out there who collect this stuff and it is worth reading a little bit more about it. But other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us? So apart from sanitation, agriculture, education, roads, bridges, and the aqueducts, the Romans also gave us uranium glass. It has been known to be in use since the year 79. Uranium glass (also known as depression glass, or vaseline glass-among other names) is glass with small amounts of uranium incorporated into it, which gives it a distinctive color (hence the name, vaseline glass), as well as a very distinctive greenish glow when ultraviolet light is applied to it. This will make more sense as we begin to assemble our lamp. In other words, should you decide to recreate this Instructable, your finished product will almost certainly end up looking and perhaps operating differently enough, that more detailed pictures of my actual process would be of limited benefit.

However, this build is so simple, and the concept so readily and necessarily adaptable to your individual parts, that I believe it will not suffer from a lack of step by step images. Normally that would disqualify a project for me as an option for an Instructable. You will notice that all of the pictures are taken after the fact. I do not have pictures of the process as I put it together. This, is our Uranium Lamp!įull Disclosure: I already built this. Instead of the LEDs lighting up the room, the light from the LEDs will strike uranium atoms within the glass and cause those atoms to emit light of a completely different wavelength. In this Instructable, we will be constructing a lamp that takes advantage of the fluorescent properties of uranium to light a room indirectly. Knowing the difference is not necessary for this Instructable, but it is worth learning, if for no other reason than correcting people at parties. I will say 'glow,' because it is easier to type, but really what we are demonstrating here is fluorescence. I like things with gears and pulleys, and electronic doodads, and fire, and flashing lights.

It fascinated me, and I had to have some. I ran across uranium glass somewhere along the lines of my travels. Then I noticed an indoor lighting contest and I knew the planets had aligned. But recently I built something that made me want to come out of retirement. It's been quite a while since I've last created an Instructable.