Uranium Glass: From Bowls to Bombs

Though now mainly associated with nuclear technology, for nearly a century and a half after its discovery in 1789, the element Uranium was mainly used for colouring glass and ceramics. Uranium Glass - particularly in the form of 1920s-1930s "Depression Glass" - is highly collectible today, and exhibits spectacular fluorescent properties under ultraviolet light.

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[CristianArezzini]

Very nice video. No bright flashing colors, no loud music, no yelling, no video effect, just pure content. Thanks!

[randydewees]

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.

[cwtrain]

"Meh. I know about Uranium glass. It's a Science YouTuber staple."

*3 minutes later*

"Okie dokie. I know dick about Uranium glass. My apologies. Please continue, professor."

Very comprehensive. Cheers.

[CeltKnight]

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. :)

[Muonium]

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).

[stephenbritton]

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.

[hitchpost]

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.

[BrilliantDesignOnline]

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.

[charlesachurch]

Another fascinating presentation thanks xxx. I feel satisfyingly informed.

[tfrowlett]

The way I hunt for uranium glas is with a Radiacode spectrometer, that way I can know exactly what makes it radioactive without having to break it apart

[comentedonakeyboard]

Arguably a more reasonable use of Uranium.

[Seasonstobecheerful]

I've been collecting ug for decades .. I'm more concerned about the uv lighting I've installed, the glass is safe.

[BerndUlmann]

Gamma spectroscopy can be used to determine if it really is Uranium glass. It is even non destructive.☺️

[ancient_of_mumu]

Have you seen the folks out there that will facet broken glass into gemstone shapes? I bet uranium glass would look awesome.

[jc-iq]

0:00 What's the name of this tune again? I've forgotten and it's bugging me.

[vikm]

is it safe to be in the home? and is it always color green/ greenish yellow?

[ericfrazer]

can I use my Handheld X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) Spectrometer to determine if it is indeed uranium glass? :)
thanks for the cool video!

[ArodWinterbornSteed]

Can’t you use and X-ray spectrometer to determine if uranium is present? Or is none of the uranium at the surface?

[eckligt]

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:


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.

[thatguyc]

It is killing me that i cannot name the into song.