WJULY 06

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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.