Category talk:Luminescent minerals

Untitled

Is there any evidence for the majority of the minerals here being "luminescent" to any credible degree, as generally understood for "luminescent" and "mineral"? Halite (rock salt!) ? Gypsum? See Talk:Montmorillonite#Luminescent? Viam Ferream^Talk 09:20, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I created and started to populate this category of "Luminescent minerals" based on e.g. a list of luminescent minerals in the book Minerals of the World by Rudolf Duda and Lubos Rejl (pages 490–493) published in 1986 by Spring Books (an imprint of Paul Hamyln). (Duda and Rejl are mineralogists from the Czech Republic).

I named the category "Luminescent minerals" because more than 100 minerals exhibit one of more forms of luminescence when exposed to certain types of electromagnetic radiation. I think it a reasonably appropriate name for this category. Luminescence is not just glowing in visible light or glowing in the dark (e.g. the sub-types called phosphorescence and chemiluminescence).

Luminescence of Halite:

Halite is a luminescent mineral because it exhibits a sub-type of luminescence called fluorescence.

Some sources in the mineralogical literature indicating the luminescence of halite include:

M. Biernacka, R. Majgier, K. Maternicki, M. Liang, A. Mandowski (in press) Peculiarities of optically stimulated luminescence in halite in Radiation Measurements, doi:10.1016/j.radmeas.2016.02.022

Y. Rodriguez-Lazcano, V. Correcher, J. Garcia-Guinea (2012) Luminescence emission of natural NaCl in Radiation Physics and Chemistry, volume 81, pages 126–130, doi:10.1016/j.radphyschem.2011.07.012

Luminescence of Gypsum:

for example, see:

M. Taga, T. Kono, N. Yamashita (2011) Photoluminescence properties of gypsum in Journal of Mineralogical and Petrological Sciences, Volume 106, pages 169-174 (The first sentence of this article states "Gypsum or selenite, the transparent variety of gypsum (CaSO4·2H2O), is a well-known luminescent mineral.")

A.R. Lakshmanan (2005) Effect of pressure on the luminescence properties of gypsum, anhydrite, calcite and Dy doped CaSO4 in Radiation Measurements, Volume 39, pages 235–240, doi:10.1016/j.radmeas.2004.07.002

You can find all the above articles if you search for them with Google.

Luminescence is a property of minerals that is useful in their identification; therefore, I suggest that this category should remain and should be expanded and eventually subdivided based on the sub-types of luminescence that the luminescent minerals possess.

GeoWriter (talk) 15:03, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

"Luminescence is a property of minerals that is useful in their identification"

I would be happy with that as a definition of scope for this category.

However note the qualifier "that is useful in their identification". Anything will luminesce if you hit it with enough X rays!

In the context of "minerals" though, is this a useful measure? I would suggest that "in the field" remains a crucial aspect, not "in the lab with pump radiation of some unfeasibly short wavelength". So even UV fluorescence from a portable blacklight would count as luminescent for our purposes here. For "gamma rays at 70 atmospheres" though (Lakshmanan), is that really relevant to a geological context (implicit from the use of "minerals") rather than one of solid state physics? Viam Ferream^Talk 15:34, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I agree that some text should be added to this category's page as a scoping statement about mineral identification in the field. Thanks for the suggestion. I could mention that it is about practical identification of minerals, either in the field or in a lowish-tech mineralogical lab (at room temperature and pressure), and also mention that it is not an ultra-high-tech high-pressure solid-state physics scenario. GeoWriter (talk) 16:57, 16 March 2016 (UTC)

I have added a scope/explanation paragraph at the top of the category page. I hope this clarifies what this category should include and exclude. GeoWriter (talk) 11:56, 17 March 2016 (UTC)