Saturday I went downtown to a local arts and crafts show, which was severely hampered by 40mph gusts of wind. I ended up buying a few little things: a uranium glass bottle, and two copper bowls.
Uranium glass (often called Vaseline glass) is fascinating stuff. Here is a link to the wiki article. One thing I like about it, apart from the nice radioactive shade of green, is that it fluoresces under blacklight. I did not happen to have a blacklight with me (a shame) but I decided to take it home and test it there.
Amusingly, the blacklight I found first is my prop Sonic Screwdriver.
On the left (as a test item) I put a marble that I know is made of uranium glass. On the right I put the new bottle.
So I aimed my little Sonic Screwdriver at them, to see if they fluoresced as they ought.
As you can see, the control marble that is authentic glows wildly under blacklight. And the new bottle… does nothing. EPIC FAIL.
So there you go. Even a fake Sonic Screwdriver can be a useful tool!
I thought the real U-glass was milky? In any event, it is excellent to test things yourself.
Well no, as per the other (real) piece I have, and the wiki article: “Specialized collectors still define ‘vaseline glass’ as transparent or semitransparent uranium glass in this specific [yellow green] color… Even within the United States, the ‘vaseline’ description is sometimes applied to any type of translucent glass with a greasy-looking surface lustre.” So this piece may actually be Vaseline glass, (meaning the tag didn’t lie) but it isn’t Uranium glass, like I thought it would be.