Did you know?
Almost every bright, well-formed zincite crystal you see in a collection was never meant to exist. Natural zincite is mostly dull red masses, so the vivid orange and red crystals nearly all came as an accident, condensing inside the flues of zinc smelters in Silesia, Poland, decades ago.
Collectors prize willemite for the way it glows green under ultraviolet light, and that very glow sent it into early electronics. The natural Franklin mineral fluoresces green because of traces of manganese, and a synthetic copy of it, zinc silicate doped with manganese, became one of the first green phosphors that lit up the screens of cathode ray tubes and oscilloscopes.
