The Bologna Stone

Hi Gordon,

I am very interested to see this, not sure how I missed it until now.
I have been buying Rare Earth Oxides from China.
I sell them mostly to Borosilicate Glass artists.
They produce similar if not the same effects in the glass.
The ones that I know work the best so far are Holmium Oxide, Europium Oxide, Yttrium Oxide, Dysprosium Oxide, Neodymium Oxide, Samarium Oxide, Erbium Oxide I think, and I believe Thulium Oxide, but no proof on the last one except what I read. I will look around for pictures of some that people sent me.

Holmium Oxide in particular is very interesting because it is different colors under different lighting, yellow under daylight and pink like Erbium Oxide under Flourescent light.

Do you know if anyone has done anything with Barium Sulfate or BaS lately, it is much cheaper.

Here is an excellent technical article that explains the phenomenum in Barite:  www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0350-0608/2006/0350-06080667101D.pdf

It mentions some of the elements I just mentioned as impurities in the Barite causing the Flourescence /luminescense, as well as a couple others, Ag, Bi, Ce, Eu, Sn, Nd, Tb, U, ......not all of these are Lanthanum series Rare Earths but the electron shell structure allows a delayed release of photons which causes the phenomenum.

Here are a couple more articles that are related to this topic in various ways:

io9.gizmodo.com/this-2000-year-old-pigment-can-eliminate-the-third-dime-1661476168

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_purple_and_Han_blue


Thanks
Paul