Two common foods that are ALWAYS radioactive
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- Опубликовано: 6 фев 2025
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XKCD radiation chart: xkcd.com/radia...
Adam met the XKCD guy? Dang that’s crazy dad lore
I'm more impressed that the XKCD guy met Adam Ragusea.
@@Deviationism same
Is this a discussion about who's more popular? Because I'm pretty sure Randall Munroe is. At least in academia everyone knows him - many even by name, instead of calling him "the XKCD guy".
@@lonestarr1490 Yeah but the xkcd guy doesn't yell at me about macarons
Dad lore is an untapped field of study. The amount of people out there whose dads have shaken hands with Nixon, saved the Grateful Dead, guarded Reagan, or had a pleasant conversation with Nicholas Cage is a statistic we need in the modern era.
And all those stories are "true"
>cooking channel
>look inside
>freshman level nuclear physics
issa good channel
this should not be freshman nuclear physics knowledge but sadly too many people struggle even reading at a primary school level so i guess we can't expect nuclear physics to get demystified in this century.
Punctuation marks help other people understand what you mean.
(Speaking of primary school)
that's the main reason why Adam is my favorite cooking youtuber :D
soy chad Ragusea
@averesenso in Spanish you’re just Adam’s long lost Latino brother named Chad.
I love anti-panic content
i guess this guys funding didnt run out yet.......the reason hes has extra radiation in the background is the same reason the banana isnt radioactive.......usda and otherr agencies eradiate food during processing......why do you think he wont measure other produce..........
There are cameras in your walls and bugs under your skin.
I know what you did in September 18th 2012.
@@rehab_herr in all seriousness, the government can spy on you in 3D using your wifi.
@@rehab_herr the cia has tapped 10000 bananas under your bed.
"Ugly bag of mostly water"
Adam reaches back into my childhood and pulls out a deep quote.
I remember that insult. I still greatly resemble that remark!
As for my childhood, then we were mostly ice, not plain water... ;)
*ATTENTION BAGS OF MOSTLY WATER*
Man, I miss old school Star Trek. Lol
yessss
Adam does love that saline solution.
Is it sad that we all got that quote immediately and came to the comments: yes.
Did I do it with no regrets: also yes. 😂
why i season my sintilator and not my geiger counter
Well played!
I mean yeah the scintillator needs doping in the sodium iodide crystal while the gieger counter needs a vaccum, pretty obvious if you ask me
he's never gonna escape this.
his grave will read "why i seasoned my casket and not my corpse"
Scintillator.
@@PartialViewmusic Sintilator obviously detects sins or trigonometry.
"Ugly bag of mostly water"
Classic Adam, putting a deep cut Star Trek quote in a video KNOWING that nerds will comment about it! Thus boosting engagement on the video. Brilliant and good reference :)
my mind just cant get around the fact theres a way we can literally see radiation without any kind of fancy technology or magnification. those particles are so incomprehensibly small yet make a trail big enough to see with a normal human eye
Yep, there are plenty of guides in building a cloud chamber on YT. One even has plans that don't require dry ice, but instead a regular aluminum heat sink, gunk from a cold pack and hot water.
Just think... everything you see is illuminated by visible radiation
The particle moving through the supersaturated alcohol vapor acts as a nucleation site to form droplets, which then combine and become large enough to see
Very cool
What I find even cooler is that the original cloud chamber was made to study rainbows, and accidentally made a really important discovery for a wildly different field
I'm not a radiation expert but I do think it's worth noting that alpha and beta radiation particles are both electrically charged which becomes a bigger and bigger deal at smaller and smaller scales. Most likely the particles aren't actually making direct contact but are instead interacting electromagnetically
House taught me :
1. Brazil nuts are radioactive .
2. They are called castanha-do-pará which translates to "chestnuts from Pará".
Looking for this comment because of House MD
They don't talk about that in that episode... the guy had selenium poisoning from the Brazil nuts.
@@etymonlegomenon931Later in the episode he argued with the boss because they told him a poisoned agent was in Bolivia instead of Brazil. That's where he makes the point that in Bolivia they are called Brazil nuts, but in Brazil they are called the above.
In German, we just call the para nuts. Well, except we use the German word for nut.
@@MikeJMcK No one is arguing about that. The episode does not teach you Brazil nuts cause radiation. The patient had selenium poisoning from the Brazil nuts. Not radiation poisoning.
"We worked this out in highschool, if you ate 40,000 bananas in 10 minutes you would die of radiation poisoning."
"Ah yes, the RADIATION would kill you."
SCP-3521 moment.
Ironically, it's really potassium would stop your heart, due to it being one of the things that controls muscle contractions in our bodies, including our heart. Too much potassium will kill you faaaar faster than eating 40k bananas. On that note: the sugar content would kill you before you ever reached the famous number.
That's not right though. It's more like 50,000,000 bananas.
Ah yes the radiation would kill you radiation can't stop me I consume bananas every day which means I am consuming radiation the government can't stop us time to make the biggest banana smoothie known to man
I think eating 40,000 bananas in 10 mins would kill you regardless of radiation😂
Of course I've heard of the Brazil Nut, it's the namesake of the Brazil Nut Effect!
It's the effect where in a collection of differently sized particles moving about, in the absence of a large difference in density, the larger particles will tend towards the top over time.
This has the effect that when you have a jar of mixed nuts, as you move the jar when you pour or take from it and such, the Brazil nuts tend to the top of the jar and you end up with "OOPS! All Brazil Nuts!"
Last time I checked we didn't have a definitive answer to why that happens. Has anyone found out by now?
@@lonestarr1490 Idk how you'd definitively prove it, but afaik it's not considered unsolved or anything. The short answer is just that small things can squeeze under a big thing more easily than a big thing can squeeze under a small thing.
@@cebo494 But why would those small things prefer to squeeze under the big thing instead of towards the top? Shouldn't the be just as easy for them?
Oh, that has a name! Neat. I think of it as the "cereal box crumbs problem".
@@Naeddyr The scientific name is "granular convection".
I guess that's it's just an urban legend that if you talk about radiation on RUclips, it'll summon Kyle Hill.
Pretty sure you have to say it more than once. Maybe… 3.14 times?
Kyle Hill Kyle Hill Kyle Hill K
I scrolled down and Adam Hill was the third thumbnail.
@@gabemerritt3139your supposed to say it into a Geiger counter.
Tell us you're a simp without telling us
7:01 lol. I’m a nuclear engineer. So, the pile of chips. Um… they would work as a shield from radiation coming in from beyond the chips. So, under certain circumstances, the radiation level might drop. lol, working with weak sources can be a pain. We always used sources that were about 100 times stronger than that in our lab work. Sometimes strong enough to cause an old fashioned Geiger counter to fail and stop counting. Certain Geiger counters have a long recovery time after a count/event. Doing measurements and calculating this time period was the work of one of the labs.
me eating my 500th piece of uranium glassware and my tummy starts to hurt (must be the radiation)
Most if not all of the leechable uranium is leeched out after one or 2 washes or used
@jamesv4463 I like my glass dirty bruh
@@jamesv4463 it's the uranium hurting his tummy
@@jamesv4463 I only drink my milk from a dirty glass
@jamesv4463 the uranium gives it flavor
Not exactly related to the video, but I hate it when foods are sometimes touted as "good source of X nutrient" when in reality they're impractical or even dangerous to consume in amounts sufficient to attain a meaningful fraction of the RDI of that specific nutrient.
Brazil nuts on average have so much selenium that basically one nut often gets you above the recommended daily dose; eating several per day may get you into the selenium toxicity range, yet I've seen many sources touting Brazil nuts as a "good source of protein" because they are 14% protein. If you shouldn't eat more than one a day, which will provide you with about 0.5 gram of protein - perhaps it is a source of _good protein,_ but it is not a _good source_ of protein.
Bananas in particular bug me in that way. It was really confusing as a kid checking the nutrition data and realizing I was supposed to eat 9 bananas a day! As it turns out, lots of foods contain similar or greater amounts of potassium. We just think about bananas because they were chosen as an example of a small radiation dose in daily life
_Hugh Laurie with a cane entered the chat_
That is an excellent point.
Totally agree. Fad diets are just buzz for website traffic and magazine filler. Calories in vs calories out is the golden rule. And of course, making sure the food you do consume has the nutrients you need despite being in a calorie deficit.
We've been eating this nuts in Brazil like popcorn and no one is getting intoxicated.
9:37 Just to be pedantic, Radon is a different element than Radium. Yes, radium can decay into radon, and both are named after the Latin "radius" (meaning beam, or ray), but that's where the similarities end. Radon is a noble gas and it is famously found underground, often collecting in basements. Here in Switzerland (and probably many other countries), we have strict federal limits on the amount of radon (or more specifically, the amount of sieverts coming from radon) you're allowed to have.
It is a heavy noble gas so it is more likely to collect in basements.
He didn't say anything wrong. Radon comes from Radium. Radium turns into Radon.
Geologically speaking, the Korean Peninsula is a pile of igneous rocks with token deposits of coal and limestone. Igneous rocks contain more radioactive isotopes than any other type of stone. In this country, there is a mountain preserved as a national park in the middle of a megacity of 25 million people, and standing on the mountain's summit exposes you to higher doses of radiation than standing on a public square in the center of that same megacity. Why? The summit of this mountain, Bukhansan, is like a bare outcrop of granite monolith, and granite is more radioactive than either concrete or asphalt. Granite is everywhere in this country, so a random local groundwater pump gets shut down all the time because local health authorities found too much Uranium in the water. It is not even about radiation - the health risk Uranium posed to the locals was about heavy metal poisoning.
The funniest thing I've seen in this country was when a manufacturer had to recall radioactive mattresses. It was found that the company sourced clay from an unlucky domestic source, and those responsible never considered checking it because it was just a bed. They didn't see the need for scrutiny like, pun intended, bedrock. The government facepalmed because they needed to "meet me at the APT." for a reason that will not garner the same applause as ROSÉ and Bruno Mars. The company panicked because they needed to meet the upset government "at the APT." and explain why a bedroom dozens of meters above the ground had more Radon than a basement. Meanwhile, the evening news became a free and unexpected nuclear physics/medicine lesson for the rest of us. Things like this make me, as a Korean, build a "whatever" mentality towards anything related to radiation - short of nuclear bombs or reactor meltdowns.
@@appa609
Radium decays to radon but they are not the same element. Radium is not qas, radon is a heavy noble gas so it collects in basements. It has a half life of about 4 days not millennia like radium.
Indeed I had applied to work in a company producing test devices which are (among other things) are used to sample testing cement powder (to ensure that this is safe to be used for building houses.
7:40 Notice that the radiation from the banana is the same amount as living within 50 miles of a nuclear power plant. Nuclear power is safe and clean.
Chernobyl and Fukushima were outliers caused by poor engineering and human error. Another nuclear plant near Fukushima was actually closer to the epicenter of the earthquake and tsunami, but it remained safe because they took the proper precautions.
So in other words, nuclear power is safe until humans make mistakes that cause it to not be safe anymore. Now we can argue about what the word safe means, but I do not call that safe. Because humans will keep making mistakes.
Is it still worth it to have nuclear power? Maybe. If you have your own supply of fuel in your country and you also have nuclear weapons where you need the tech for. Can be worth it.
If you dont: Then nuclear power is strategically unsound.
@@Moulwurf Yeah, todays operational nuclear power plants aren't quite idiot proof. They can't explode like Chernobyl by hitting the off button, but they do need cooling for quite a while after they've been shut down to not go into meltdown, which is risky in the case of natural disaster, see Fukushima, or war.
There are however some interesting new reactor types that can't melt down, even if cooling is shut off, such as pebble reactors and molten salt reactors, but we will have to wait and see if those will become economically feasible.
@@MoulwurfWell other green energy sources aren’t nearly as efficient as nuclear and implementation on a scale large enough to supply the whole power grid is unrealistic, and it’s proven that fossil fuels cause hundreds of times more harm than the hypothetical harm of a nuclear power plant already.
So what’s the idea here? Nuclear power could be dangerous so let’s do nothing and just get cancer from the objectively worse carbon pollutants?
@@Moulwurf You can argue about what "safe" means, but if you just measure it by how many deaths for how much power has been generated, Nuclear is one of the safest. Even considering the accidents far fewer people have died and far less radiation has been spread into the environment than coal power.
@simonholmqvist8017 And economics are another factor - nuclear power is safe when it's well maintained, when safety procedures are followed, when equipment is in good condition. And what are usually some of the first things to suffer in a commercial enterprise when times are tough or the government subsidies get cut or the executives get greedy? Yeah.
But frankly the real problem nuclear fans have is that it simply isn't necessary. Even if the risk is very very very small, it's still a risk that doesn't *need* to be taken because if we spent a tenth of what they want us to on building nuclear plants investing in line & substation upgrades plus grid scale storage solutions then the sole problem with renewables nuclear fans insist nuclear is necessary to mitigate - provision of power outside of peak generating periods - goes away completely. Let's be real, all of the supposed benefits of nuclear power are a smokescreen for the reality that some countries just want to keep making nuclear weapons, and they need there to be a viable global nuclear industry in place to make that possible.
It's really hard to measure radiation! One thing to keep in mind with that pocket scintillator is that it is very very small. Normally, in experimental nuclear physics, we deal with detectors that have volumes of 10+ cm^3 at a minimum, many extending well above this and some having volumes of active detector material measured in liters. It's always a tradeoff though! I work with neutrons, and a common method of measuring their energy is to measure their velocity. In this case, you get a trade off between detector volume/thickness and resolution, with thinner detectors being preferred.
With radiation, it's important to remember TDS or Time, Distance, and Shielding. You limit the amount of time you spend near a radiation source, keep your distance, and use shielding to lower the dose you receive.
You might be interested to know, but many smoke detectors contain a small amount of radioactive material, usually Americium-241. You should be able to able to see an increase in radiation if you hold it near one of these smoke detectors. Some newer smoke detectors use a different technology though and are no more radioactive than the background.
Alec from the channel Technology Connections does a video on the 2 types of smoke detectors.
It's worth watching! (pretty much all his vids are worthwhile)
I had a smoke detector fail, so maintenance replaced it and made the mistake of handing the broken one to me. Got the americium-214 source in the box with my scintillation detector (built from plans on CERN's outreach site). Eventually, I'll build a cloud chamber. Probably go with a cold pack based, using a hot water tub on top to give the temperature differential to get the vapor.
As for his basement, got a different concern about going there - stairs and a bad disc that causes one knee to fold up randomly. ;)
Interestingly, I'm a bit hotter in gamma than my children's generation, verified by gamma camera during baseline measurements for a thyroid scan. I suspect some part may be due to growing up during the atmospheric testing era.
And ironically, born a week after the cleanest bomb ever built was detonated - and the largest, Tsar Bomba.
And then you get the nutters studying neutrinos with their "my detector is a cubic kilometer of antarctic ice" instruments.
Maybe you should pick up one of these tools and try it out too
This is really nice science communication, I also appreciate how aware you are to not do the dreaded "I'm smart I'm gonna have opinions about everything"
Adam is the Anti-Joe Rogan
Most of the scary stories on radiation rely on the L-NT (Linear-No Threshold) model, which extrapolates down from doses of radiation that can be shown to produce cancer or other diseases to low doses. The minor little problem is that the model is essentially untestable, and was originally advanced on the basis of “caution”.
My radiacode didn't even really register it being more radioactive than background radiation, however it does detect the potassium decay when doing a spectroscopy. My granite countertops however are definitely radioactive being more than twice background.
Also vasoline (uranium) glass isn't that spicy. Find some orange fiestaware. That thing would make your radiacode and gieger counter scream. You can find it in antique shops. I have quite a few unique pieces.
Gotta find the correct period fiestaware though
As long as you have your tool with you you'll know immediately, and the battery life on them is actually really good. You can leave it on for literally days.
Thanks for bringing upfront vs. waiting halfway through to reveal. Then, I was curious and listened to the video to the end.
Fun fact. I was a reactor operator in the Navy. In nuclear power school we learned to discuss the amount of radiation exposure to the equivalent amount of bananas and number of transcontinetal flights.
Spent 20 years active Navy (18.5 on shore duty) and never did anything with nuclear propulsion. Now I'm a shipyard RCT.
@Kriss_L 10 years here. 2 subs (Boise and Virginia) with a tender in between (Frank Cable). I went to RCSS school prior to going to the Frank Cable.
Don't forget bags of fertilizer or bags of coffee.
@@dirtyblueshirt coffee? How bad is coffee? 😢
@@WhytePip about three bananas.
Thanks for this video. I was living in Tokyo at the time of the Fukushima incident. There was so much information and misinformation going around. It didn't help that the true information wasn't as clearly explained and demonstrated as this video.
I could not be happier that you are in a place where you're able to make more content. I'm glad that you're in a good place and of course I love your content
I’m a nuclear medicine technologist and it’s very common to misuse the word ‘isotope’. Even other technologists and radiologists do it. The proper term is actually radionuclide. An isotope is referring to the different nucleon numbers in reference to an element. For example, I-131 and I-123 are isotopes of Iodine.
cloud chambers are really cool, love how you have been playing around with this to try to show the small trails left behind by radiation from the nut or the banana. really cool stuff
4:22 Adam’s Amazon cart has to be wild
I like this Adam he's explaining something and I get the vibe he doesn't completely understand it unlike in his cooking videos he's much more fluently speaking
Little did we know the real collection of tiny bombs were the basements we made along the way.
I really appreciate your content. You taught me all sorts of stuff with your videos. Probably more than my parents did
Nosalt is a misnomer. A salt is any ionically bonded molecule. When a doctor recommends lowering your salt intake, they mean your sodium intake. Potassium chloride is still a salt, but because the ion is of a different element, it can exist in solution with the sodium without changing the solubility of either, therefore not raising blood pressure. Too much of any given salt (sodium being the most common and abundant) raises blood pressure by increasing blood volume as osmotic pressure forces water into your circulatory system to reach an equilibrium between the salinity inside and outside of your cells. This is particularly hard on the heart and kidneys which struggle to pump blood and filter out the excess salt, respectively.
I enjoy having more of your videos back here; just hope you're doing it on your own terms.
Also disappointed you didn't post an affiliate link for the radiation counter.
Another fascinating topic and subject from the mind of Mr. Ragusea for our morning's delectation. Thank you!
Intention: don't be scared of eating bananas. Outcome: I'm scared of going into basements
Right?!
Thanks for switching back to food just content, Adam! Subscribed again!
I particularly liked the amount of time and effort you put into this video. But, great as always :)
Adam are you going to do more greenhouse videos? Really enjoyed those, and you talking about your pet fish and crabs.
0:17 I'm guessing banana
Good job
Bro spoilers
Same. Potassium yo.
10:25 Dr House moment
5:10 I got that TNG reference even before he made it more explicit.
alternatively, you can say FutureCanoe's chicken
He lives in chernobyl
craziest nugget of info in this video is that you've met the xkcd guy :o
His name's Randall Munroe, btw. (the ", btw." not being part of the name, and neither is this stuff in the parentheses here.)
One of the things that really drove home how little radiation there actually is in bananas is SCP 3521, which is a pill that would "cause acute radiation sickness by bananas manifesting in the target" but in reality would just cause them to explode by the manifestation of the 40,000 or so bananas in their stomach
I just bought uranium glass what a timing
Neutrons are the other other other white meat ;)
Adam since that's a radiacode, you can actually pull the gamma spectrum and see the K40 peak. Leave it away from living things for 6 hrs grab the spectrum. Stick it in your pocket for 6 hrs and take a new spectrum and you'll get a K 40 peak on the gamma spectrum.
You can also pull the origin for mushrooms from northern Europe based on the Cs137 and Sr90 over 6 hrs and with a good calibration.
Wow, that chart with the measure of radition levels was really eye opening!
I get it. Not worried. It's at least worth mentioning that there's a big difference between external radiation and radiation that goes inside your body through eating.
And there's also a difference between what goes in, and what gets accumulated inside you.
Your body keeps potassium levels steady regardless of how much you eat; if you eat a banana, you'll pee out a banana's worth of potassium shortly. The potassium in the banana is no more radioactive than the potassium in your body, so it all equalizes.
That’s what effective dose measures, it accounts for biological pathways and types of radiation
The pronunciation of Square *Space* frightens me for reasons I can't articulate
Another great nerdy video. Thank you!
I remember a House episode where a guy was exhibiting radiation type symptoms because he constantly ate Brazil nuts
Yep, the CIA one
That one episode of house prepared me for this
yeah non radioactive toxic selenium very relevant.
That's what I came down here to say.
Was thinking about that episode the whole time
I just fucking watched that episode yesterday ?!?!?!?
the way House says Castanhas do Pará is seared into my brain
This is really reassuring, thank you
An xkcd reference was a happy surprise.
you have a knack for explaining things in an easily undewrstood manner.
This is such an important message, it's getting exhausting having to explain to almost everybody that minor radioactive accidents that made a detectable difference to the ground water supply etc. aren't a problem.
The yearly allowed dose is for a rad worker is normally much much lower(by most company policies) than the NRC maximum. Where I work it's roughly half of that. In my over a decade of working at a power plant, the average I receive for every trip to the RCA is normally under 0.6 mrem for the entire trip, with it sometimes being so low as to not display on our self reading dosimeter.
that was so darn cool! thank you for sharing this
Rad video. Literally.
8:25 This chart doesn’t make much sense to me, but it might be different in the UK vs. the USA. In the UK (I am a nuclear medicine clinical scientist trainee in the UK), absorbed dose is measured in gray, not sieverts. Sieverts is for effective dose (the thing we set limits on, but this includes the organ weighting factor) and equivalent dose (this includes the radiation weighting factor, so whether it was an alpha particle or a gamma).
I also work with radiation and biological samples, and everything we do is measured in kilogray, although we only have photon radiation, and no organs to worry about.
I work on nuclear reactors, and we us REM for dose.
We did everything in bananas until we started working with a European lab. Now we use metric bananas.
@ I think that is an american thing. At work I was looking at a paper that had values for effective skin dose from I-131 contamination that was given in rem but in the uk we work in Sv so I just did a units convertion. Do you also use rem for absorbed or equivalent dose?
@@archie41439 I'm not on the Rad Heath side, but on our tests we use Rankin is for radiation and REM once it hits a person.
When we document our surveys, it really doesn't matter much as use mR/hr for almost everything.
A Spanish RUclipsr made a video measuring the radiation in Brazil nuts. He dehydrated them and then burned them to remove the non-radioactive matter. Result: since they had no water or carbon, the ashes emitted more radiation.
I'm leaving the link to the video in case anyone is interested in watching it (it's only in Spanish, sorry) ruclips.net/video/JH-bzvNm8B8/видео.html&ab_channel=CienciaDeSofa
If by chance you know of a video in English please share it
1:14 Why are we always depict atomic nucleus like that? We know cookie with raisins model was completely wrong for the atom itself. Wouldn't it make more sense to think that the nucleus might, at least slightly, follow the same rough structure as the entire atom with electrons?
Awesome episode dude! I worked in a nuke plant on a air craft carrier. I have a mechanical engineering degree. I knew most of this, but you taught me a ton of stuff.
Potatoes contain significantly more potassium than bananas, I would be interested to see how high potato flakes bump up the measurement by comparison. Probably still less than the basement.
Yeah I had to give up or reduce many different vegetables when on a low potassium diet. It's remarkable how only banana gets the reputation. Butternut squash, green beans... Jalapenos are more potassium-dense than bananas so maybe try chili powder. Potatoes are even higher but you can cut off the skin and boil to reduce the potassium significantly.
@@dananskidolf I think it's wise that bananas get the reputation, if only because most people with diet-related conditions (from diabetes to high cholesterol) would continue to devour chips, fries, and cream-heavy puree... and then claim they're eating healthy thanks to all the potassium.
Do potato flakes contain the skin? I'm pretty sure the potassium (along with just about all other nutrients) is concentrated in the skin.
9:00 funny thing is that this chart is just a way of visualizing a number in the millions... which people have trouble with too...
Just after the incident at Fukushima I checked the allowable levels of radioactive cesium a few months later as the cesium levels were rising on the west coast of the US I looked it up again and the "safe level" was 10 times higher... Safe levels of all kinds of things change too frequently and often at the most opportune times..
I’ve got some uranium glass as well as a clock with radium paint on the dials. The glass measures anywhere from 70-180 counts per minute with my Geiger counter and the clock, about 500 cpm. The clock is outside on my patio so not near anyone.
Should have also shown the radiation from a smoke detector. Those are pretty radioactive. Especially that silver round thing that's the radiation source.
Americium/Germanium, incredibly radioactive
it's interesting how it works: the machine detects the radiation, and if its blocked (by say, smoke) it will go off
it's why smoke detectors also beep when their battery is low/dead. it's able to conduct but not properly read said radiation
Americium
I eat one of those every few days or so. To prepare for the apocalypse
*one* of the two common *types* of smoke detector is slightly radioactive... the less useful one, which is being phased out cuz of *that*, not cuz of anything to do with radioactivity
Yeah, but that an alpha emitter, unless you eat it there’s no danger
Thank you so much for the ST: TNG reference "Ugly bag of mostly water"
I have a radiacode 102 and logged for several hours and saw a visible bump at K40 in the spectrum analysis when measuring near a bunch of bananas.
Second person in as many days I've heard use the "ugly bags of mostly water" line and it makes me so happy.
I always love your videos, Adam. Unrelated, but I saw you have foam pads on the walls of your studio area. They have very little effect on dampening reflections outside of the highest frequency, weakest sound waves. You should invest in some acoustic panels made from some thicker insulation for your rocking tracks! You'll be able to use less and control much more lower frequency bands. Those are the real culprits of muddy sound in a small space since the waves are large enough to bounce multiple times and resonate in the room.
Nuclear Engineer here. Love you're content! Doing great
now im scared to go in my basement
Did you even watch the video? It's literally nowhere close to dangerous levels.
@@reesespuffs8998 Maybe their basement is packed to the brim with Brazil nuts?
@@reesespuffs8998 This is true and you shouldn't worry about going in your basement. But it is worth to note that the currently accepted model of radiation exposure is linear and assumes that no amount of radiation is safe. So getting less dose is always better even though in Ragusas case being in his basement would be exceedingly unlikely to ever make a difference. If you however have a lot of radon in your home the gas can accumulate in the basement and that can actually make a difference.
@@reesespuffs8998what video
I want you to know you have a very good name. Ragusea is so punchy with the R and G sounds but then trails off in a very sophisticated way. Also, Adam Ragusea becomes Atom Ragusea as you discuss nuclear physics.
My understanding is that Beta Particles are considered _high energy_ not _low energy_
They would also likely be blocked by the thickness of the container of the salt substitute
Beta particles can be any energy -- they're just electrons emitted by decaying atoms.
For instance, betas from potassium-40 have about 1.3 MeV, while those from tritium have about 6 keV (= 0.006 MeV).
I was wondering if maybe there was foil on the inside of the container that blocked the beta particles for him. Some years back, when I tested my potassium chloride, potassium citrate, potassium bicarb, and whatever other kitchen potassium sources I had, I got a major boost above my background level and actually moved them out of the kitchen, not because the levels were dangerous, just higher than I felt they needed to be and I didn't need anything more heaped on my existing anxiety pile at the time.
I feel like you explained this kind of confusingly, but radium decays into radon, which is a different element, not just the name for the radiation that comes off of radium. Radon can be a problem because it is a gas, which means it's more likely to get inside your body (by breathing it in) where it can cause more damage.
love how you qualified "being scared to go into your basement"
As a New Englander, everyone is scared of that monstrous old oil burner in their basement!
incredible school science fair project, adam
I been saying I found n love ya cause you put science into your daily stuff and could do your whole channel explain science connections to daily life stuff like food
10:08 The main reason the difference occurred was less so due to surface area, but more specifically due to the fact that naturally occurring Radium, Ra-226, decays into alpha particles, which have EXTREMELY short range such that a sheet of paper could block them. Surface area was a great way of simplifying for a food-centric video, I just wanted to add for the curious!
Adam don't ever invite me to your basement like that again.
Oh are we going to get information about irradiating food for preservation and pest prevention? I'd love to learn more about that!
Gamma irradiation
If you are going to measure with the radiacode like that I would recommend that you have the sample as close as possible to the scintillator side. Ideally touching the tip/end on the LED side.
For your dehydrated banana sample, you may also wish to pulverize it and concentrate it in the bottom of a mug, then placing the radiacode point *into* the powder.
As for detecting a difference in counts or dose, it's hard to see a difference like that because of the error margins.
You can probably have a better idea of the activity of the sample if you compare it to background:
I like to take take 12 hours of background radiation spectrum, in this case kitchen standard. You can save this spectrum in the app, then set it as a background on the spectrum page.
To measure the sample, you then clear the collected spectrum and let the radiacode sit in banana/nut dust for a few hours.
Ideally you'll accumulate events over time that show if your sample has a different spectrum from your kitchen background.
Source: Radiacode user, uranium glass and fiestaware hunter, former radiation control intern.
6:28 BARE-ing. Very good, Adam.
From what I've heard it is the peel of the banana that hold the majority of the potassium. So if you want to see more in the chamber you should use the peel. That also means that bananas are safer to eat than the measurements next to it could suggest
"Ugly bags of mostly water"? What a Star Trek Nerd! Me too for getting the reference.
Great science communication as always.
I would be curious to see a demonstration of someone creating, like, an enclosure of lead foil to isolate background radiation, and then testing various foods. Maybe that's something NileRed would be interested in doing, and then a video of him extracting the radioactive material.
Adam, if you really want to detect those, i think i watched action lab shorts about 40K in banana and one of best way to do it is to use the banana peel and concentrate it by burning them (so the flammable/organic materials would go away and left the inflammables including the K)
The scintillation country only detects gamma, which the potassium doesn't emit. The uranium in the Vaseline glass does release gamma and why there's a bump. My geiger counter does go off with the no salt since it picks up alpha, beta, gamma, and X-ray.
I use potassium salt in my water softener and I purchased a Radiacode a while back. When I put it into the water softener with 200 pounds of potassium chloride it went crazy with the alarm going off. I should go back and check the dose rate but I am guessing it is still miniscule.
Fun fact: It gets more radioactive outside when it rains. The radon gas produced by nuclear decay is heavy, so it mostly wants to stay in the ground. But when it rains, the water soaking into the ground displaces the radon, which causes it to come out of the ground.
Hey, just a fun thing about those nuts.
They not only glow under UV, they ACTUALLY glow in the dark (very very briefly). Same with peanuts, cashews, and some others.
Try it yourself. Go into a lightless room (I say lightless, but mostly it just needs to be very dark without, say, the light from the hallway coming in under the door), have your nuts ready (shelled and with the 'meat' exposed), close your eyes, shine a nice strong UV light on them for a few seconds with the light as close to the nut as possible.
Then, flip off the light and open your eyes a split second later.
It's wild. They glow a faint pasty yellow/green.
Additionally, they glow brighter and longer the colder the nuts are. This also works with nut butters. In fact, using something like peanut butter, you can actually clearly see where each individual LED in the light was because they leave a glow pattern on the surface for the duration of the effect.
Fun stuff.
I like the Cody's Lab episode where he tries to make a banana out of the potassium from bananas. Its was A LOT of bananas
11:28 I live in a basement and I recently thought I'd check out if I had radon, I do and the long term average is currently 115Bq/m3. It's only been 68 days of testing the standard metric is 91 days. I live on an island with only sandstone and I thought surely it would be zero. I've since learned even the air outside is about 15Bq/m3. Opening a window makes it worse, windy days worse, high barometric pressure makes worse, cold temperatures makes it worse (it's -20C here now and it's 184Bq/m3). Smokers (I'm not) are far worse since radon supercharges the harmful effects of smoke effects on lung tissue. My Dad who quit smoking at age 30 died of IPF which long term radon can cause. I'm going to have a radon fan installed. Radiation is all around us but some of you like me may be in a worse situation than you know. Be careful!
4:55 top 10 conversations to NOT have at airport security
Your problem is that your scintillator is a piece of amazon junk.. You need a pancake sensor on a real geiger counter.. I use a RadAlert Inspector and I can hold it up to the potassium salt replacement and the CPM rate almost doubles over ambient.
Get a real Geiger counter and stop buying the imported garbage.
EDIT: I've been watching some of your videos.. I really like the one on Malt (I learned a lot!) and now just watched the baking powder vs baking soda.. and learned even more! Wohoo! Great videos, thank you!
Great content!
I have a geiger counter and a few radioactive sources such as some uranium ore, a radium dial from an old glow in the dark watch, and some uranium glass. The watch dial is around 25-50 times above normal background radiation and is still perfectly safe. Going on a plane has similar levels of radiation (around 20-25 times above normal background levels). Unless you're eating a container ship worth of bananas, you're probably fine. 😅
can you do a video on tinned fish and how much you can eat it? there's so much information out there I can't really figure it out. I can't really afford the best norwegian brands for example that may be better, and I don't mind the smaller fish, but what's the real limit here? I know moderation is key, but I got into tinned fish because it was a shelf stable protein that I could actually eat every other day (per claims about how safe sardines are) but now I don't know.