[Beverly Girvin]

Beverly Girvin asked the Naked Scientists:
   
I believe the ring my Grand mother bought me when I was 10 years old has an Iolite stone in it.  The stone was the most beautiful stone I had ever seen..

It is emerald cut and it reflected red, green, orange and was a dark blood reddish purple when light was not hitting it.

A friend of mine insisted that it was an Alexandrite and was so persistent about it that we ended up going to a jeweller to identify the stone.  

The young girl took my ring to the back of the store and cleaned it, but my ring has never been the same since.  The stone has lost all of the depth of colour intensity, and it no longer reflects the spectrum of colours that it did prior to this cleaning...

What happened??  Is there anything that I can do to restore the depth of color??

Help!!

Sleepless in Seattle

What do you think?

[Bass]

Welcome to the forum Beverly.

Your description sounds more like alexandrite- did the jeweler identify it?  How did they clean it?  Ultrasound? 

[RD]

Genuine alexandrite is one of the most expensive gemstones available commercially

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysoberyl#Alexandrite

The young girl took my ring to the back of the store and cleaned it,
but my ring has never been the same since.
What happened??  

Switcheroo ?? (I'm too cynical).

Just a thought:
new energy-saving fluorescent lighbulbs do not emit the continuous spectrum of old incandescent light bulbs. The colours seen in this type of gem will look different under these different light sources, (less colours under fluorescent light). 

Typically, alexandrite has an emerald-green color in daylight but exhibit a raspberry-red color in incandescent light.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysoberyl#Alexandrite

Fluorescent ≠ incandescent