I love to eat Brazil Nuts because....

[JoyfulNoise]

they contain the highest levels of naturally-occuring radioactive Radon in them :tasty: :cyclops: See here --> Brazil Nuts

Other fun-facts about everyday sources of radiation --> Natural Radioactivity

 

[Isaac-1]

Ooh, now I need get a sealed bag of Brazil nuts and see if I can detect any increase in radioactivity over time, either that or keep an eye out on ebay for a alpha scintillator.

Ike

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Ooh, now I need get a sealed bag of Brazil nuts and see if I can detect any increase in radioactivity over time, either that or keep an eye out on ebay for a alpha scintillator.

Ike

Polystyrene is a good scintillator that emits in the visible blue range (410nm). The plastic anti-tamper shrink wrap on Snapple bottled beverages is polystyrene and it glows blue-violet in sunlight because of scintillation.

You just a need a few meters worth of solid polystyrene and decent photomultiplier tube. Just be careful with the 1kV power supply, the shock from those will leave you a little twitchy for a few hours .... (I can speak from experience)

 

[Isaac-1]

If I remember correctly Polystyrene works as a beta scintillator and the first two Raydon daughters are products of alpha decay, however I think the next 4 are beta decay.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

If I remember correctly Polystyrene works as a beta scintillator and the first two Raydon daughters are products of alpha decay, however I think the next 4 are beta decay.

You may be quite right. My particle physics days only lasted a very short time, ~ 14 months, then I moved on to a job much closer to home. The daily 3+ hour commute killed me.

 

[Isaac-1]

To tell the truth I have only casually looked up the Radon information, since I live in Louisiana the chance of Radon exposure is trivially low. Louisiana is the only state in the US where the entire state is considered level 3 (low risk) on the EPA Radon risk map, and when I looked up the actual number of published positive Radon testing results in the state a few years ago it was trivially small (less than 1 in 100,000 homes), of those most were explained by imported stone brick used in the home construction, and only a handful had high enough Radon levels to require mitigation. Also almost all the positive Radon test results not explained by construction materials occurred along the river flood plains, and I don't live in one of those thankfully.

 

[Melt In The Sun]

That's cause there's nothing but mud in LA, and you need rocks for radon!

 

[Isaac-1]

We have more than mud, we also have sand, some surface gravel also in the area where I live about 250 feet above sea level there are a whole lot of pine trees and slow rolling hills, although with all the rain the last couple of weeks there seems to certainly be plenty of mud. There is even a small area about 50 miles north of here that has some hills with some surface stone visible and a former rock quarry that is now a lake at a state park.

 

[JoyfulNoise]

EPA says AZ is all Level 2.

So, Ike, I feel sorry for you! If the X-Files taught us anything, it showed that only us desert-dwellers with our high levels of natural background radiation will survive the impending alien colonization (the "black oil" eye worms). Too bad cuz I kinda really enjoyed your posts....

"The TRUTH is out there!"

 

[foobert]

Well now. Hello there fellow radiation observers (some might say weirdos). I usually vacation w/ a Geiger counter nearby. The Grand Canyon proved more exciting than expected.

One day I'll finish up my scintillation detector. Too many hobbies -- not enough time...

 

[JoyfulNoise]

Well now. Hello there fellow radiation observers (some might say weirdos). I usually vacation w/ a Geiger counter nearby. The Grand Canyon proved more exciting than expected.

One day I'll finish up my scintillation detector. Too many hobbies -- not enough time...

Great web page!! Your kids will appreciate the memories some day.

Come down to Tucson sometime and you can hike through Reddington pass (or take an ATV ride) and go visit the old Reddington ghost town. Your Geiger counter may pick up more than just some background radiation

 

[pooldv]

fellow radiation observers (some might say weirdos).

Really? Only behind your back. actually, you are only weird cuz you hang out with Matt.

 

[Isaac-1]

I have thought about taking radiation detectors with us on vacations to the western states, and probably will if we end up buying an RV (currently shopping for a small Class A). Just not sure what to bring, that debate of sensitivity vs fragility. For example did you know the reduced air pressure crossing the continental divide is low enough that it can rupture the thin mica window on a pancake probe, and unfortunately my only NaI gamma scintillator is connected to a vintage bench top rate meter. I do also have a primitive 30 year old "portable" 4096 channel MCA that I bought on ebay last year, that I have yet to bring it back to life. It is really impressive how much compute power $40,000 would buy in 1987 (now $75 on ebay as is), this one is a middle of the line model, but the top of the line had 4 megabytes of RAM.

 

[foobert]

Yup, precisely why I have 2 different tubes. The vacuum rated LND712 is my go anywhere travel tube; it's small, but not terribly sensitive. . Here's the logging of my trip to Hanford's B-reactor (note that all of the large counts outside of Hanford were the result of high-voltage power lines and an unshielded probe cable). My pancake tube lives in a sealed, airtight can when not in use, or above 7500' of elevation.

But for portability, I'd really like to have one of these.

 

[Isaac-1]

I need to get a good modern portable detector, I have a small pocketable basic Russian made modern geiger counter (single LED that blinks), along with several more vintage handhelds, some of which work, including a vintage 1957 Sears Tower geiger counter I bought at a flea market about 15 years ago that included a 7mR Radium test disk, 3 CDV-700's, one of which is a post 9/11 CDV-700-RP refurb with the SE International pancake probe, as well as a HDER G-01 (post 9/11 Homeland Defense repainted / refurbished AN-PDR-27S) with dual (hi and low rate) geiger tubes, the low rate tube is an end window tube, but not a particularly sensitive one, I do have a digital rate counter I have adapted to the headphone jack for this one though.