Scientists Discover Rare Crystal That Changes Color

Recently discovered Scapolite reacts to UV light in a way not seen before...
#shorts #minerals #gemstone #science

Merch!
I think Scientists are Rockstars so I made t-shirts to celebrate it

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[nthedecent]

They found the material that dress is made out of 😆

[DANGJOS]

This explanation was slightly confusing. I'll post my response to someone else's comment to see if I'm getting this right: "When the UV light is incident upon the mineral, it's absorbing UV photons and emitting yellow light photons. This means the process of an electron going up a level and then falling to an intermediate one must be what's causing the yellow color because that's how fluorescence works. Maybe the blue color is caused by the electrons remaining in that intermediate state and continuing to absorb yellow light."

However, there must be more to this story because specific electron transitions cannot cause vibrant color changes. The reason is that the color requires broad absorption of many wavelengths of light in order to selectively absorb enough light from white light to make it appear colored.

[GunSpyEnthusiast]

" This material changes color when exposed to light. "
Nearly every material does that in some form. For instance, when Copper is exposed to light, it gets brighter than when it wasn't exposed to light.

[parkersmith]

I'm kinda glad I took AP chem so i can understand this stuff.

[lIII]

Very Interesting! Didn't know electrons could so easily change its layer. Its also interesting that the smaller inner layer has a higher freq than the outer larger electron layer. Makes sense!

[MK-xdwg]

"Worst Pokémon evolution change" 😂

[timlesiuk]

Electrons and higher or lower energy states is how I used to teach atoms.

When I learnt more, I realised that this is highly inaccurate and possibly best describes the probability of location, but maybe only if it is not being observed.

[Koyomi]

Thats the photon the electron's is throwing back out, theres a very small part of light that is absorbed, its just the light without that spectrum. Also, when the electron jumps orbitals to go from lets say s orbital to p or d, then it absorbs light, it lets out that light when it goes down to the ground state

[theoriginalmonstermaker]

I bet it's similar to the "electron loosening" in conjugation.
(Trees change color partially due to patterns of "double bonds" changing as the green pigment degrades; the new patterns offer the freely shifting electrons new orbital quanta to bounce to)

I bet some unique way the ions exist in that crystalline matrix allow the shared electrons to flow in a similar way.

... or maybe not.

[DANGJOS]

All in all, pretty cool, but this explanation is a little too oversimplified so hopefully I can read more on it later.

[seansteel]

Why can't women be interested in these gemstones? No, they just want that crap diamond, artificially priced sky high. No logic works on them.

[devindoesntlikeyou]

🤓☝🏼 /j (sorry lol, I had a long day. All of these rocks look really yummy, thank you for showing them to me)