What are "Uranium Marbles"?

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ceratophyllum
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Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2012 11:07 am

What are "Uranium Marbles"?

Post by ceratophyllum »

I bought some of these guys on eBay to test out my geiger counter kit since I could find absolutely nothing even slightly radioactive lying around the house or yard. (I guess this is a good thing!). It just beeped <20 times a minute, no matter what I put near.

Anyway, the little glass beads I bought are definitely 10X about my background, giving me almost 200CPM when I stuck them on top of the (boxed) geiger counter in a little plastic nail box.

What are these things? Some kind of industrial waste product? The listing called them "marbles." They're definitely NOT MARBLES like I had when I was a kid! They're sort of flat and similar, but not all identical in shape.

Here's a picture of what happens when I placed the beads to the side of the geiger counter (samples 30-120) and sitting on top of it (samples 120 to end):
beads.png
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mightyohm
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Re: What are "Uranium Marbles"?

Post by mightyohm »

They may not be round, but your marbles are probably very similar to the uranium glass marbles I have in my collection. They are a dull green color and fluoresce bright green under UV light, right?

These marbles are radioactive because they contain a small amount of uranium oxide. Uranium glass is sometimes called 'vaseline' or 'depression' glass.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_glass
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