A sea of sparks: Seeing radioactivity
30 points - today at 6:34 PM
Sourcelukasschwab
today at 7:48 PM
You won't make one at home, but cloud chambers[^1] reveal individual alpha particle tracks.
There's one in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris — blew my mind!
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber
Edit: turns out people make these at home all the time. Sick!
Yenrabbit
today at 8:01 PM
You can easily make them at home (source, I did last weekend!).
- Dry ice (mine came from something shipped cold)
- Dark piece of metal (I used a 3D printer hot bed) on top of dry ice to get cold
- IPA vapour (I poured some on a shop towel)
- Some transparent container to house it all - I found a glass display cube on the side of the road, fish tanks or Tupperware also work.
- Torch or something to provide side lighting
Very cool to see evidence of the particles zooming around us, can highly recommend.
If you haven't experienced a spinthariscope, I can highly recommend it. I bought one as a Christmas present for a buddy and we both enjoy its demonstration of radioactivity.
I tried the same with bananas. Got nothing.
Bananas are like XML that way. If you're not getting the results you want, you're just not using enough of them.
kergonath
today at 7:31 PM
Potassium-40 is not an alpha emitter.
fecal_henge
today at 7:35 PM
Maybe he used banana as the scintillator.
DetroitThrow
today at 7:35 PM
That's unrelated. He's been diligently substituting bananas in many experiments to mostly disappointment.