Yellow Fluorite, UV reactive  Morocco Prehistoric Online
Yellow Fluorite, UV reactive  Morocco Prehistoric Online
Yellow Fluorite, UV reactive  Morocco Prehistoric Online
Yellow Fluorite, UV reactive  Morocco Prehistoric Online
Yellow Fluorite, UV reactive  Morocco Prehistoric Online
Yellow Fluorite, UV reactive  Morocco Prehistoric Online

Yellow Fluorite, UV reactive Morocco

Fluorite, Yellow and UV reactive

Morocco

Dimensions:  5.5″ x 4″ x 1″

SKU: db-yfluorite-3

$350.00

Availability: Only 1 left in stock

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Fluorite is a mineral with a veritable bouquet of brilliant colors. Fluorite is well known and prized for its glassy luster and rich variety of colors. The range of common colors for fluorite starting from the hallmark color purple, then blue, green, yellow, colorless, brown, pink, black and reddish orange is amazing and is only rivaled in color range by quartz. The many colors of fluorite are truly wonderful.

The rich purple color is by far fluorite’s most famous and popular color. It easily competes with the beautiful purple of amethyst. Often specimens of fluorite and amethyst with similar shades of purple are used in mineral identification classes to illustrate the folly of using color as the sole means to identify minerals. The blue, green and yellow varieties of fluorite are also deeply colored, popular and attractive.

The rarer colors of pink, reddish orange (rose) and even black are usually very attractive and in demand. Most specimens of fluorite have a single color, but a significant percentage of fluorites have multiple colors and the colors are arranged in bands or zones that correspond to the shapes of fluorite’s crystals. In other words, the typical habit of fluorite is a cube and the color zones are often in cubic arrangement.

To top it all off, fluorite is frequently fluorescent and, like its normal light colors, its fluorescent colors are extremely variable. Typically it fluoresces blue but other fluorescent colors include yellow, green, red, white and purple. Some specimens have the added effect of simultaneously having a different color under long-wave UV light from its color under shortwave UV light. Some will even demonstrate phosphorescence in a third color! The blue fluorescence has been attributed to the presence of europium ions. Yttrium is the activator for the yellow fluorescence.

Green and red fluorescent activation is not exactly pinned down as of yet, but may be due to the elements already mentioned as well as other rare earth metals; also manganese, uranium or a combination of these. Even unbonded fluorine trapped in the structure has been suggested. The word fluorescent was derived from fluorite since specimens of fluorite were some of the first fluorescent specimens ever studied.

The thermo-luminescence is green to blue-green and can be produced on the coils of a heater or electric stove top. Once seen, the glow will fade away and can no longer be seen in the same specimen again. Fluorite has other qualities besides its great color assortments that make it a popular mineral. It has several different crystal habits that always produce well formed, good, clean crystals.

The cube is by far the most recognized habit of fluorite followed by the octahedron which is believed to form at higher temperatures than the cube. Although the cleavage of fluorite can produce an octahedral shape and these cleaved octahedrons are popular in rock shops the world over, the natural octahedrons are harder to find. A rarer habit variety is the twelve sided dodecahedron however it is never seen by itself and usually modifies the cubic crystals by replacing the edges of the cube with one flat face of a dodecahedron.

Weight 32 oz
Dimensions 8 × 8 × 8 in
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