Addie's Oddities

I have been enamored with radioactive materials ever since ever since I read the book “Green Glass Sea” in middle school. It’s a fictional story about a tomboyish girl who grew up at Los Alamos during the Manhattan project. The idea of a desert being turned to glass was both disturbing and incredible to me, and I began hunting for Uranium glass soon after that. Most of my pieces are purchased at antique stores, and most cost under $10. I don’t purchase pieces I know I won’t use, so I usually avoid buying plates and kitchenware.

It’s not actually radioactivity that causes the characteristic green glow of uranium glass. It is fluorescence from UV reactivity, and it’s common in non-radioactive materials as well. Selenium, manganese, lead, calcium carbonate, and cerium are a few I can think of that can also fluoresce under UV light exposure, and they all appear different colors. I prefer uranium glass mostly because I love the translucent green color that collects around the edges of the glass. These are some of the pieces that I own: