Broadband uvb bulb have been around for a while using a phosphor driven by low pressure mercury emission.
Best uv light for minerals.
All minerals have the ability to reflect light.
But that is not always the case with most other longwave uv reacting minerals.
There s a silver lining here though.
The same uv light in particular uv c light which has a wavelength between 200 and 280 nanometers while visible lights smallest wavelength measures 380 nm.
Canadian wernerite and greenland sodalite are some of the brightest longwave minerals on the planet.
If you are not familiar with uv and uv lights you can learn more under the uv topics pages.
The best most efficient longwave uv source to use for mineral fluorescence is a special white phosphor coated blacklight bulb combined with an external visible light blocking filter.
Since most of the visible light is filtered and only uv light is passing through short wave ultraviolet lights are the best black lights for minerals.
It offers almost 3 watts of uva output radiant and is unbelievably bright.
However a few minerals will show up better under lw.
Midwave mw bulbs have become more popular among fluorescent mineral collectors recently because certain minerals display most prominently at the uvb wavelengths around 311nm.
Short wave uv lights are the most commonly used by fluorescent mineral collections since about 80 to 90 of all fluorescent minerals will fluoresce brighter under short wave sw than under long wave lw.
As a matter of fact that is how we humans are able to see the minerals.
Why do minerals glow more under short wave ultraviolet light.
Note that these lights must have a uv pass visible blocking filter a must for any light used with fluorescent minerals even led lights.
Convoy c8 365nm flashlight this light is the next generation convoy the convoy redesigned.
While this approach is considerably more expensive than using ordinary blacklight bulbs it provides much purer uv light allowing less visible light to mask the fluorescence.
Choosing a shortwave mineral light is difficult.
Uv resources is located in santa clarita ca.
Specifications used to promote many of the lights on the market are misleading and inaccurate quoting the overall power used to light the bulb not the much lower power of the uv generated by the bulb.
Wuben e19 uv pen light flashlight 365nm professional black light detector for rocks and mineral glowing fluorescent dye a c leak detecting ip68 water resistant 2 aaa batteries included black.
The company offers hvac uv sterilizers for government commercial industrial healthcare education food production hospitality and residential applications.