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Glowing Glass


Steph

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What chemicals are associated with what glow?

Uranium we know fairly well, but there are still some terms which are sort of fuzzy.

Uranium gives the glow of both Akros Lemonades and Limeades, right? But are both called Vaseline glass? For that matter, is either called Vaseline glass? Is it safest to just say uranium glass.

^^ that's an example of what I'm a little fuzzy on.

There are some modern Marble Kings cat's eyes with a pretty blue glow. And I once had a jar with an even brighter blue glow. I seem to recall that is from calcium.

Manganese and selenium both also come up as words associated with red glow.

Sooooo ... time to collect the tidbits ... or find some good links.

Oh and hopefully some pix. :)

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The effect is luminescence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminescence and here the special photoluminescence gives the effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoluminescence especially the flourescence is effective when using blacklight

There is a shop around that sells special marbles glowing in the dark a long time after they got lit. I will try to find its URL later, the physical effect in charge here is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphorescence

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Have only heard that manganese is the source for that orange glow . . . I never heard selenium connected with UV. Interesting. Must go light up my Cerises and other red slags tonight, since that's the red colorant in pretty much all machine-made marbles. If they glow orange I'll be shocked! Not like it's the first time I've received a Marble Shock, though.

I'll be interested to see if anyone knows where that light blue comes from. And occasionally I've seen lavender.

The last glass mentioned in that link article Steph posted, neodymium, is crazy. I have a "slag" made by Mike Edmonds out of neodymium glass, and I have amused my non-marble co-workers with it. I hand them this pretty, pale, icy blue slag (it's a little larger than 3/4) and ask them to keep holding it and walk outside with me. When we get outside, I tell them to look at the pretty blue marble again -- and the expression on their faces when they open their hands and find a lovely lavender marble is one of those "priceless" things. Pale blue in fluorescent light, lavender in incandescent and day light.

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Thanks for the pictures, folks!

I'll try to get brave and get my own pictures.

I especially want to capture the blue glow.

Sometimes blue is like a lack of glow, but this blue that I have in mind is definitely light coming from the glass.

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Aw, yeah, poor thing. Another veteran of marble games.

Could be the glow I'm thinking of.

The glass I have in mind is transparent, so it has a different look to it. But if you're seeing actual blue light emanating, that could be the same chemical colorant.

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  • 1 month later...

I know a source where you can get real glass glowing marbles, i got around 10 of them and gives a bluish glow, it's not uranium and it really glows in the dark (not only by UV light). This is the only source i know to get glass glowing marbles, but the roundness isn't very good.

There are also some marble run construction sets who include some plastic glowing marbles.

Does someone know more sources to get real glass glowing marbles (5/8 ")?

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That's a very nice blue shade.  That's a different shade from the blue I know about.  

Intriguing.  Thank you for that lead.

 

I got some nice bright Marble Kings fluorescent marbles -- the uranium kind.  But actual glow-in-the-dark?  The only ones I can think of in that category are here: 

http://www.landofmarbles.com/hom018.html

They have glow-in-the-dark bits inside.

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