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All minerals have the ability to reflect light. That is what makes them visible to the human eye. Some minerals have an interesting physical property known as fluorescence. These minerals have the ability to temporarily absorb a small amount of light and an instant later release a small amount of light of a different wavelength. This change in wavelength causes a temporary color change of the mineral in the eye of a human observer.
Fluorescence in minerals occurs when a specimen is illuminated with specific wavelength of light. UV light is the typical type of light that excited the fluorescence. The UV light have the ability to excite susceptible electrons within the atomic structure of the mineral. These excited electrons temporarily jump to a higher orbital within the mineral’s atomic structure. When those electrons fall back down to the original orbital, a small amount of energy is released in the form of light. This release of light is known as fluorescence.
The wavelength of light released from a fluorescent mineral is often distinctly different from the wavelength of the incident light. This produces a visible change in the color of the mineral. This glow continues as long as the mineral is illuminated with light of the proper wavelength.
UV lights are the essential tools which are used in the field to collect these beautiful minerals. UV lights are not only used by hobbyists to find these treasures but have been used by prospectors in the past to find minerals such as the fluorescent minerals uranium and scheelite-primary ores used for many purposes. In the early days of mining, UV lights are an essential tool in locating the ore veins.
How we select a suitable and reliable UV light for the mineral purpose? First, we need to make it clearly that 365NM UV lights have the advantage of not emitting violet light. The mineral objects will fluoresce strongest at 365NM, as evidenced by absorption spectrum measurements. Second, the one with higher UV intensity can fluoresces the minerals more brightly. So we can say a UV light with 365NM wavelength and higher UV intensity can be more suitable for the mineral application.
Sunlonge is the leading industrial UV light manufacturer for more than 15 years. Now with devoted to this field, we developed a full set of UV light models for customers in different industry. The newly launched SL1200 can be suitable and reliable model for the minerals. SL1200 is with 1 pcs 365NM UV LED. Due to the customized optical lens, the UV intensity can be up to 48 000 uw/cm2 at 15 inch distance, which is much powerful than that of other suppliers. It can definitely fluoresces the minerals more brightly under the same condition.
