[HN Gopher] Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory
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Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory
Author : chris_overseas
Score : 66 points
Date : 2023-05-01 04:14 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| helf wrote:
| I've always wanted to get my hands on one of these for my
| collection lol
| atemerev wrote:
| It was quite safe, and it would be great for something like this
| to have a comeback.
|
| Now you can build your own Wilson chamber with isopropyl alcohol
| and some youtube instructions, but you'll have to spend a lot of
| time to (legally) procure your own test sources. This is sad.
| wahern wrote:
| > but you'll have to spend a lot of time to (legally) procure
| your own test sources.
|
| As @api mentioned elsethread, you can just buy isotopes from
| United Nuclear:
| https://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=2_...
|
| You can also buy isotopes from other online scientific supply
| stores, but they're more of a hassle as they cater to business
| and institutional customers. In the U.S. I think most (all?) of
| them, including United Nuclear, are resellers for Spectrum
| Techniques (https://www.spectrumtechniques.com/about/), which
| is the commercial outfit working with the Oak Ridge National
| Laboratory to manufacturer and sell so-called exempt quantity
| isotopes. For most isotopes, including some really nasty ones
| like Polonium, Federal regulations permit unlicensed possession
| and sale under a certain quantity. A sample of Polonium for
| example (I have one on my desk right now), comes on the head of
| a pin.
|
| Building or even just buying and setting up an experimentation
| or display rig, like a cloud chamber, is much more of a hassle
| than acquiring the actual isotopes. I never did get around to
| building a cloud chamber; that sample of Polonium has never
| left my desk.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Isn't there some radioactive material to scrap from the fume
| detectors ?
| imglorp wrote:
| Yes and also several ores often found at rock shops, some
| Fiestaware, uranium glass, add if course radium dial watches.
| All legal in the US in small quantities and harmless as long
| as you don't ingest or inhale their dust.
| arcticbull wrote:
| The Radioactive Boy Scout has entered the chat.
|
| > David typed up a list of sources for fourteen radioactive
| isotopes..Americium-241, he learned from the Boy Scout
| atomic-energy booklet, could be found in smoke detectors
|
| https://harpers.org/archive/1998/11/the-radioactive-boy-
| scou...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I usually hear them referred to as smoke detectors (U.S.).
| Some decades ago when I checked mine had a small metal
| enclosure with a pin-head amount of Americium inside.
|
| Pretty sure though that if you live at very high elevations
| like Denver, Colorado, you'll get vapor trails for free. :-)
| speed_spread wrote:
| If you're lucky enough to live in Denver, you'll get much
| more free radiation from Rocky Flats than from vapor
| trails.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| (Ha ha, the vapor trails I was referring to should appear
| within the cloud chamber -- I didn't mean the tin-foil-
| hat kind.)
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| When you're selling a toy to kids, those warnings about not to
| remove something from its container are useless.
|
| In high school, I was in summer biology when some slacker took up
| a vial of mercury and started monkeying around with it. It did
| not take long for the cap to come off and we had a mercury spill
| in the middle of the classroom. And then my classmates began
| trying to scoop it up with their hands and scraps of paper!
|
| As the son of a scientist who worked in Environmental Health and
| Safety, I immediately recognized this as a hazard and sort of
| recused myself from the whole scene. It was embarrassing.
| canadianfella wrote:
| [dead]
| zdragnar wrote:
| If you don't know what elemental mercury looks like, then
| playing with it is pretty much the obvious outcome.
|
| Mercury is _cool_. Metallic, reflective, heavy, liquid, forms
| balls, and eats into (forms amalgams) other metals in really
| visually interesting ways. Sure, it 'll poison you if you eat
| it, or if you combine it with some organic chemistry it will
| really quickly absorb at toxic levels, but it doesn't tell you
| that. It just sits there, looking really, really fun..
| ufo wrote:
| So cool that it was deemed cool enough for the special
| effects on Terminator 2.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quUnYyJg5N0
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Well, I reckon that kit was somewhat more risky than the circular
| disc of uranium of about 1.5 inches in diameter and about 0.25"
| thick we experimented with at school. The beta and gamma sources
| were in the form of foil about 1cm square but I don't know or
| can't remember what the sources were.
|
| As a kid, I'd loved to have had one of those Gilbert kits (at
| least back then we had chemistry sets that actually did exciting
| things).
| chasil wrote:
| The wiki states that less than 5000 kits were sold, due to the
| high price.
|
| These were quite rare.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I must mention that the Cloud Chamber exhibit in the science
| center was definitely my favorite thing for over a decade. It was
| definitely eerie to see these little contrails, basically
| produced by subatomic "micrometeors" that were all streaking
| through our atmosphere. It really gave you a sense of
| perspective.
| [deleted]
| adonovan wrote:
| In my UK high school in the 1980s, during a lecture from a
| visiting nuclear engineer to our science club (BAYS), we got to
| handle (and directly touch) various sources including a piece of
| Plutonium about the size of a 2p coin, edge-framed by lucite but
| not sealed. The point was to show that alpha was blocked by paper
| but I still wonder how wise that was.
| api wrote:
| For today you could do some of this with supplies from here:
| https://unitednuclear.com
|
| They actually feature a picture of this kit!
|
| The sources required to do these experiments are low grade and
| not particularly dangerous as long as you exercise the same
| cautions you would with a chemistry set, model paints, etc., such
| as not huffing or eating them.
|
| The most dangerous thing sold on that site are the magnets:
|
| https://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=70...
|
| They need a louder more obnoxious warning banner for those. The
| big ones can literally crush you or fire metallic objects like
| bullets. People used to dealing with fridge magnets have no
| intuition for magnetic fields like that.
| mikestew wrote:
| _They need a louder more obnoxious warning banner for those._
|
| One need scroll past a blinking GIF, and a warning of a small
| child losing their hand when Dad left a giant magnet lying
| around and the kid went near another giant magnet, amongst
| other dire warnings, before you get to the "buy" button. I
| don't know what you suggest as an improvement, but after a
| point idiots are gonna idiot.
| clnq wrote:
| An interesting example of early cancel culture in the Radar
| Magazine click farm, stoking nuclear paranoia for clicks.
| Unfortunately, many other click farms still have stories up about
| this today.
|
| It's ironic and intellectually stifling that we accept risks to
| our kids from biking or sports, yet demonize learning nuclear
| science. Even when the former regularly harms more kids and in
| graver ways. Is this a result of unfounded nuclear fears, or is
| there more to this I'm missing?
| dale_glass wrote:
| > An interesting example of early cancel culture in the Radar
| Magazine click farm, stoking nuclear paranoia for clicks.
| Unfortunately, many other click farms still have stories up
| about this today.
|
| Not early at all. The phenomenon always existed. "Cancel
| culture" is just a new name for an ancient thing.
|
| Eg, before "Cancel culture" as a common term we had protests
| against Harry Potter, and before that against D&D, and before
| that against rock music (Elvis was scanalous!) and before that
| against witchcraft.
|
| It's as old as humanity, and if anything we've gotten a bit
| more polite over it in modern times in that burning people at a
| stake is less of a thing.
| obscurette wrote:
| As someone had my own fights decades ago, there seems to be
| difference though - at least in the second half of last
| century people fought against things and phenomenons, but not
| against people behind these. This was true even in Soviet
| Union - as dissidence we fought against system, corruption
| etc, but never against people directly in a way cancel
| culture does.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Revisionism. There always were people who were singled out
| and attacked for various reasons.
|
| The very word "boycott" comes from the last name of Charles
| Boycott from the 19th century, who was not boycotted
| politely at all. In fact people working with him, including
| 12 year olds got death threats, and his property was
| systematically destroyed.
|
| I don't know why there's this idea of that people were more
| civilized once upon a time, but I can't see any evidence of
| that ever being the case.
|
| He also wasn't the first by any means, but for whatever
| reason his last name caught on as the word for what was
| done to him.
| [deleted]
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