The glowing garnet of glory

I mayyy have gone a bit mad with the sheer joy of doing science and still being alive and able to acquire shiny glowing things

This particular shiny glowing thing is a lutetium aluminium garnet - a luminescent crystal with a unique crystal structure, grown using the Czochralski process. It’s 8.5 on the Mohs scale so pretty durable, as well as looking somehow like it was photoshopped into real life.

Lutetium is a REE (rare earth element) and these have diverse applications in tech and industrial purposes. Often, this is facilitated by forming man-made crystals using the garnet structure (such as LuAG and similarly YAG with yttritium) so it not directly intended for use as a gem but grown for use in high-efficiency laser devices. It is a 'scintillating crystal' which means it has high structural perfection, high density and high effective atomic number.

The gem material comprises small amounts of industrial scrap made available for the trade, and I bought mine from a lovely American dude called Jeff, who is in the business of selling rare and science-y rocks to nerds like me. It might be the coolest thing I own 😎✨️

I haven’t decided on a final setting yet so am just playing with it for now: I’ve been popping it into random ring settings, plus I made some rings with other types of garnet for comparison, as well as a small neon and glow-in-the-dark dinosaur army to keep it safe/look super-rad on my desk. 🦖💚