Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Uranium Glass


Here is a photo of the antique uranium glass cups I mentioned in an earlier post.  They are also called vaseline glass.  If they are really vaseline glass, uranium is used to tint the glass the yellow-green color.  Also, if they are real, they are supposed to fluoresce bright green under UV light.  It gives off a tiny amount of alpha particles (helium-4 nucleus) from the uranium and beta particles (high energy electrons) from the decay products, but is at harmless levels.

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