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THIS UPDATE: JULY 2006
Recent Happenings at the Thomas S. Warren
Museum of Fluorescence
by Earl R. Verbeek
ULTRAVIOLET LAMP DISPLAY
Most visitors to the Thomas S. Warren Museum of Fluorescence
willingly keep themselves in the dark, in the three large rooms where
hundreds of fluorescent minerals are on display. However, the museum
boasts a fourth room as well, in which ultraviolet lamps and related
equipment are exhibited in four large glass floor cases. Over the winter
three additional wall cases were added to this room, greatly expanding
our display opportunities. In recent weeks we have added numerous items
to one or another of these cases, but have yet to organize them. Our
plans now call for reorganizing the entire room along topical lines such
as iron spark machines, early mercury-vapor UV lamps, modern UV lamps,
special-use UV lamps, and related equipment such as battery power
supplies, viewing boxes, and timers. Finding time for this effort will
not be easy, especially with the new visitor season already upon us, but
the reorganized displays will add both to visitor enjoyment and our
educational opportunities.
TROTTER CONCRETE EXHIBIT
Our newest exhibit, a wall case of fluorescent concrete in the
Hesselbacher Room of the Warren Museum, has proven a hit with visitors.
This case was designed and built by Pete Gillis, who also collected most
of the concrete himself, along with his brother, Chris, and their
friend, John Dymond. Bob Hauck then cut the concrete into slabs for
display. The concrete, one of our local wonders, was collected from the
Trotter dump in Franklin and is a monument to recycling and ingenuity:
the “sand” of the concrete is mill tailings from the old mill at
Franklin, and the aggregate is crushed waste rock from the mine dumps.
The concrete was made during the late 1800s and early 1900s and is now
found as large, broken blocks, some of them buried in the sandy mill
tailings of the Trotter dump. Fluorescent minerals found in the
aggregate include the expected calcite and willemite, but also
hardystonite, clinohedrite, apatite, barite, sphalerite, esperite, and
(gasp!) margarosanite. The dearth of willemite among the bright
red-fluorescing calcite grains of the sand attests to the efficacy of
the old mill in separating the ore from the waste minerals.
LAPIDARY DISPLAY
Numerous new items were added to the display of lapidary items in the
Warren Museum over the winter, including more cabochons by Ralph Kovach
and mineral spheres from several old collections. Additional cabochons
from the collection of Edwin Skidmore rounded out our selection of new
items to place on display. Visitors to the museum should immediately
note the difference: the lapidary case, once rather thinly populated by
cut and polished minerals, is now jam-packed and immediately captures
one’s attention upon entering the room. The other displays, too, look
much better than before, thanks to a thorough cleaning by Maureen
Verbeek. Some of the cases contained so much dust, the product of
thousands of shuffling feet over the school year, that the contents
appeared rather drab. No more.
FUTURE DISPLAYS
For two years now our president, Dick Hauck, has been reciting a
mantra: “Enough with the minerals! What about other fluorescent stuff?
Make some new exhibits.” Dick wants us to pay attention to the
technological uses of ultraviolet light and fluorescent materials –
and so we shall. In planning are displays on paper currency, credit
cards, and passports, all of which commonly contain fluorescent markers
as a deterrent to counterfeiting. Postage stamps are tagged with a
fluorescent compound to enable machines to properly orient envelopes so
that an optical character reader can read the addresses and sort the
mail. Fluorescent dyes are added to safety clothing for maximum
visibility in daylight, and to laundry detergents to enhance the
brightness of your clothes. Similarly, fluorescent dyes are added to
numerous liquids, including your car’s transmission, brake, and
power-steering fluids, as an aid in leak detection and to tell which
fluid is leaking. Moreover, anyone who watches CSI on television is
aware of the many uses of ultraviolet light in criminal forensics. Here
is where we can use your help: if any of you have fluorescent
materials that you are willing to contribute, particularly ones where
the fluorescence is put to some technological use, we’d love to hear
from you. We would also appreciate your help in convincing various
credit-card companies to donate blank or invalid credit cards to the
museum for display.
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