I worked in the nuclear industry for nearly two decades, specializing in radiation monitoring systems (RMS). The final project in that part of my career involved helping design and implement a wide-spectrum directional gamma detection and isotope identification system. While this system had many applications, the project sponsor was Homeland Security, intending to use it in public areas to detect "dirty bombs": The goal of Dirty Bombs isn't to destroy as much as to make a facility unusable. The system used multiple extremely sensitive scintillation detectors arranged in a 3D array along with custom shielding to optimize both sensitivity and directionality. The hard work was the software. Measuring radiation is one of the best examples of the need to apply statistics in the real world. The limitations of the math (and underlying physics) I was using often caused the system hardware to evolve accordingly. As the system improved, background radiation became an increasing concern. The first issue was interference from our own very low-level radioactive sources: We had to upgrade our certified shielded storage cabinet (which weighed hundreds of pounds) to one designed to house high-level sources (which weighed over a ton). We also bought a pallet of lead bricks (another ton) to put inside the cabinet. Then we had to move the whole thing to the other side of the lab, over 30 feet away (the inverse-square law is your friend). Then we had problems with the concrete slab our lab was on. Turned out the rebar used in the slab was lightly radioactive, so we had to put two layers of lead bricks between the lab bench and the floor. We went quite a way down this rabbit hole. For example, the gammas we *were* looking for would also hit the shielding material we used inside the system to improve system directionality, causing an effect called "X-Ray Fluorescence", leading us to design a whole new shielding technology to minimize it (which was actually inspired by an old technology we rediscovered in some declassified Manhattan Project documents). Watching this video made me shudder: My instrument would probably be screaming with multiple alarms were it placed anywhere near FranLab!
Gammaray spectrometers are also used for making sure that your scrap yard doesn't end up with any nasty things in it. Even stuff like pipe that was used in the oil drilling business can be too radioactive to be legal. For those who don't know: The "crystal" in question is about 10cm on a side or larger and if you could look at it would be clearer than water. When a gammaray is absorbed it makes a little flash of visible light. The energy from the gamma ends up as the energy in the flash. This then goes to a photo detector. The number of electrons that go through the detector depends on the photons in the flash. Thus once calibrated the system gets to measure the energy of each gamma ray instead of just making a click.
May have been the concrete itself instead of the rebar. You'll see it at freeway overpasses too where lots of concrete is used. Natural isotopes in the mix. Her test sources are far from scary. Very weak actually. Go into any antique shop and you will get much more dramatic clicks off orange pottery, uranium glass, and old radium clocks. Don't forget about thoriated camera lenses or camping lantern mantles with radioactive ash in the bottom. I see them often in the shops around town. Nothing to worry about as long as you respect it.
Ken Smith you ain’t kidding about stuff ending up in scrapyards. I just received my new Ludlum 3 and Bicron 3” nai(tl) scintillation probe last Thursday. Also got an several retired Bicron plastic portal monitors and area monitors. All of them include massive pieces of plastic scintillation material. Well over a dozen pounds, and will be wonderful for building my own area monitoring detectors. The reason?… My buddy owns a local scrapyard and we are close to Oak Ridge national laboratory. (Home of the atom bomb)… we end up with WAY MORE than our fair share of active sources… maybe it has something to do with our proximity to Oak Ridge? My granddad worked with them years and years ago and security wasn’t as strict back then. But the scrapyard has zero monitoring equipment whatsoever, and they have millions of tons of steel that they’ve purchased over the past decade and a half. It’s kind of an odd set up because it’s owned by two old retired guys who are just stacking this stuff up for a rainy day. They don’t crush or sell anything but copper and nonferrous metals. So every single bit of steel that they’ve ever purchased is still sitting there. I’m setting up a few monitors there… And will be going through the yard looking for dangerous sources. Previously I had several geiger counters but they use regular Geiger-Müller tubes. But scintillation probes are hundreds of times more sensitive than even the biggest pancake tube… And can pick up hot sources from dozens of yards away or more. Hopefully I can keep my buddy safe and find some interesting stuff in the process. I’ve already found way more active stuff than any human shit on… And that was with my old geiger counters.
I think Fran’s so smart she knows a lot of subjects and always has bags of enthusiasm, very interesting a pleasure to watch 😀 look forward to seeing her next video. Thanks.
Ooo, one of my favorite hobbies. I have a few antiques using air ionization chambers, a couple modern units using GM tubes, and I just acquired my first NaI:Th scintillator. Currently working on making my test chamber and collimator for gamma spectroscopy.
I would highly suggest I send elation probe. It’s so sensitive you can have it sitting next to you in the car, and find hotspots while going 60 miles an hour down the highway. It will help find the general area of a hot source, which can be pinpointed using a separate pancake probe or even a collimator/(lead shielding)around the probe to a allow directional detection. I bought mine from Tom at Irad inc. on eBay. I bought a Bicron nai(tl) probe, and highly recommend him. He also sells DIY kits to build a scintillation probe using plastic detection material. But they aren’t near as sensitive. So you would need a massive 5 inch probe to equal the same sensitivity as the smaller nai(tl). My bike Ron probe gives between 3000 to 5000 background.... and can pick up very weak radioactive sources from several yards away. And somewhat hotter active sources from amazingly far away. Same type of probe they would strapped helicopters and fly over looking for uranium deposits. You really can’t beat a ludlum model 3 running a 2 inch Bicron scintillation probe, and a pancake probe or sheet small geiger counter to help pinpointing.
You have a specific piece of furniture for hanging bananas on. A banana stand. A banana pendularium. I did not know that such a thing existed, and now I do. Thus my life is enriched.
Thanks, this was interesting and informative, as always. I suddenly want to look into getting a Geiger counter, even though I have no real need for one. But what would *really* be cool is: an HR Giger counter...
I have the exact same model Geiger counter (along with 8 or 9 others), mine is the same re-issued refurbished (repainted gray and renamed) Department of Homeland Security version of the AN/PDR-27S renamed the HDER-G01 which was issued to emgerncy responders, etc. in 2001 / 2002 in order to get some more modern (1970's) units into the field to replace the vintage 1950's Civil Defense CDV-700 meters that some agencies were still using at the time.
A geiger counter is a really useful Instrument, i bought a dp-66 geiger counter from eBay, and i tested my collection of vintage gas mantles, and found 9 radioactive ones,containing thorium, a watch dial with radium paint, and a Rock with meta autunite on it.the meta autunite is the hottest test source i have now.the meta autunite is sealed in a ziplock plastic bag now,and everything is stored in metal boxes for shielding.
Thanks for the video. Like you, I had collected a geiger counter (actually, I have an older one like you have, and also a newer one with a computer interface) - and I was looking for stuff to measure. I could get a tiny hit on a bit of potassium salt, or a pile of bananas - but wasn't sure it was real since it was so small. Someone I know had some antique vasoline glass and an old (sixties era) camera lens - and so I tested those things. Wow - both of those things sent the newer geiger counter into alarm, and the older geiger counter to full scale on the lowest range. I'm not suggesting that anybody try to obtain those kinds of things, as it seems they might be unhealthy with much exposure, but they test the counters well.
Take that Geiger counter down to your local welding store and stick it up next to a package of Thoriated Tungsten if you want to see some serious meter deflection! All those clicks will turn into an angry buzz.
I did that and bought one. They are not all that active, quite mild actually. They are only 2% thoriated tungsten and the metal is self-shielding of it's own internal activity. You can find much better test sources in local antique shops. Orange pottery, radium clocks, uranium glass, thoriated camera lenses, etc.
@@nefariumxxx The ones I measured have a 350 count per minute for one rod. A pack of ten was close to 4000 counts per minute. Maybe our instruments are of different sensitivity. I am using the Inspector EXP. I even get a substantial count when I wrap the tungsten with aluminum foil.
@@davidbishop5736 Well, for the price of six dollars each, I did not buy ten of them because one was boring.... but my results are less than impressive on an LND-7311 pancake probe which is the 900v version of your 500v inspector tube! Ha ha. I took some wire cutters and cut it into sections to place on the pancake probe. I am more impressed by radium or other test sources, (70,000 CPM from old radium watch hands, for example). And then there's the AM-241 screamer.... or certain vintage spark gap tubes. :)
those prices for tungsten are way more than we see in the Seattle area. A pack of 10 3/32" should be pretty close to 20 bucks. Even less than that on Amazon.
@@davidbishop5736 That sounds much better. I just got them at a local pdx welding supply a few years back. For thorium test sources, I have stronger stuff already. One is a large recon / astronomy lens which is very thick and heavy with a yellow tint. It puts out a few mR of shielded gamma and some serious high CPM to pancake probe. It's got enough that I don't keep it in the house for very long. :)
I once saw an article in a magazine (Popular Science?) about physicists who needed to salvage a gun turret from a sunken WW-2 warship in order to get non-radioactive steel. All of the steel produced since atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons was too radioactive for their project. (Wikipedia has an article on "low-background steel" in fact.)
It would be interesting to wire up one of these to a microcontroller type of thing to collect plot-able statistics/averages over time. And if you have a bunch of them you maybe could set up an array with a synced clock source and compare timing to triangulate directionallity?
I did something like that recently. The CDV-700 civil defense Geiger counter has a headphone connector that gives 14 volt pulses. I used a potentiometer to drop the voltage, and connected it to a GPIO pin on a Raspberry Pi. Then I wrote a simple Python program to count the time needed to detect 1000 pulses. The programming went very well; the Python language has excellent functions to count low to high transitions on an input pin and excellent functions to measure time. In my home with my device, there are 12.5 counts per minute of background radiation. If Fran did something similar, she could measure how much the watch and the bananas compare to the background. Because the counts arrive at random, you have to measure over a fairly long time to get repeatable answers.
If you want to log data with a computer you might take a look at GeigerLog sourceforge.net/projects/geigerlog/ it's in python and it does support plain audio input so it should work with your Geiger counter as well. This way you can take long measurements and save all the data
WW2 radium illuminated instruments tended to be rather hot. Definitely get it checked so you know what precautions to take (storing it away from inhabited places or in an air tight case because of radon emission, limiting your time handling it for ionizing dose, and washing your hands immediately after for stray particulate that you might have picked up.)
Fran, I flew USAF nuclear reconnaissance on WC-135s for 20 years before retiring. If you want everyday radioactive check sources for your Geiger counter, there is Depression-Era Vaseline green glassware (Uranium in the glass), pre-war orange Fiestaware (Uranium in the glaze), and older Coleman lantern mantles (Thorium), as well as the radium instrument dials you've demonstrated. All will get your radiation instruments clicking happily.
@@williamnoll7935 Yes it will. Her probe uses a thin mica end window which is indeed sensitive to the screaming alpha emitted from Am-241 test sources.
@@nefariumxxx The mica is to block photons / light. The alpha remitted from the micro Curie of americium doesn't have the travel length, and is shielded by the device. I practice health physics.
@@williamnoll7935 Incorrect again. The mica end window material is very thin and used for it's ability to allow alpha to pass through and be counted. Do a simple google or youtube video search for "smoke detector geiger counter" etc. This is basic stuff to someone in the geiger counter enthusiast community like myself. The alpha emitted can travel about one inch through air, and also through that mica end window. You are confusing Aquadag which is the name of the material painted on mica in order to block photons. A pancake tube OR thin mica end window tube is designed to scan surfaces for alpha emitters / trace amounts of contamination.
I bough one of those hand held Chinese jobs and compared it to my old school unit, such as yours and believe it or not, the two units were very accurate with each other. The old one was recently certified and the Chinese one also claimed to be certified. Just so you know, for $100, it makes a nice portable "spot checker".
Loved the pencil intro! I was lucky to get a geiger counter from Electronic Goldmine. Not as nice as yours but still very interesting. Hello from Canada Fran!
Now I want a Geiger counter. If I ever get one I'll probably drive my wife nuts for about a week just going around testing everything in the house and proclaiming how many bananas.
Get a cdv-700 unless you're willing to spend like 600 dollars getting a one the cdv-700 is a good starting Geiger counter plus cheap digital Geiger counters suck
I wonder what old electronic parts are radioactive. As a teen, I used to enjoy disassembling old tube TVs and other electronics and often took each component apart to find out what was inside without really worrying about potential toxins inside.
I have not used my counter in years - for good reasons. I found the really nice weston meters i use in my transmitter are radium painted, they stopped glowing a long time ago. But are still very reactive to my civil defence late 60-'s era counter. And the radium paint i bought 30 years ago, holy crap !! The reading scared the poop out of me. Made a lead box and put it in the sump pump hole in the basement. Some of my old tube equipment is more reactive than i would like, i got thru two rooms and stopped playing with the counter. I look at it this way, i've had the stuff since the 80's and it has failed to kill me yet. I will not be around much longer anyway so i will take my chances with whatever exposure i get. Tobacco use will do me in before exposure will.
Interestingly, Ebay was flooded with the familiar yellow handheld radiation survey meters with the "CD" (Civil Defense) stickers on the side several years back. I'm guessing our local EOCs decided to finally let them go, 50 years after the Cold War. I bought one, and I must say, if you got any deflection of the needle, in any range, you were in trouble. If the highest range read anything, you were most likely looking at a mushroom cloud. I calibrated similar survey meters, Geiger counters, ion chambers and personal dosimeters, mostly for ND testing of welds (space program). We have a Cs-137 source up to 1R. I also cal'd radiation alarms that were installed above warehouse doors etc. that were pretty sensitive (nowhere near as sensitive as Bob Cunningham's post) and would set off an alarm/beacons at roughly 0.1mR/hr.
I’m pretty sure I have the same Geiger muller tube. The most shocking item I found was halogen light bulbs… not the filament, not the trapped gas, just the glass that enclosed them.
For other sources of natural radiaition that can be detected with hand-held instruments: pallet of water softener salt; 'stick' weld rods, Coleman Lantern mantles, 'old' orange Fiesta Ware plates
After I got a nuclear stress test, I amused my kids by lighting up my Geiger counter when I walked into the room. I got a letter from the lab stating that I had received the test in case I set off a Homeland Security radiation detector.
I used to have a geigermuller counter driven by mini baby tubes and a highvoltage transformer driven via a relay. The relay was very noisy so i replace that part with a two transistor multivib circuit. Loved it and background radiation was heavier on rainy days !
Geiger counters are very fun, mine is based on the SBM-20 tube so won't detect alpha emission but it's always amusing to find radioactive things where you don't expect them.
Great video Fran =D I sent an old sig gen to JaysVintageJunk recently - first thing he did was check it for radioactivity, and low and behold it was radioactive!!! =O The switches were ex RAF and have glass beads that glow in the dark (and emit radiation). I laughed lol, not what I expected!
Have you tried camera lenses made in the 1960's?Major manufacturers back then had at least one lens with radioactive glass elements..........................
You are such a trip fran :) I ordered some old cast iron from russia, and so I just had to use that as an excuse to get a geiger counter. My sister has a ton of old glass and rocks too. But I don't think I'll need an excuse to pull it out :) Always wanted one.
This is so cool... I was always ads for seeing geiger counter kits when I was a kid, but could never afford one... now that I can afford one, no more kits.
@@ReverendFuzzy Well, you weren't suggesting they had to be super high quality things ;) If it's just a circuit board, you can make it as robust as you want.
@@mfbfreak If you'll read back, you'll note I said "when I was a kid"... back then, the kits were nothing but "high quality things". You assumed the rest.
What you should consider trying is a scintillation detector which can also provide you the energy output. You need a MultiChannel Analyser which creates a plot of the counter energies. Something like a NaI:Th scintillation detector. the detector is coupled with a PhotoMultiplier tube. Another interesting experiment is to plot radiation over a period of a month. When it rains there is a spike of radiation and the rain causes Radon emissions to increase. You can also detect solar storms as it increases radiation. Detecting radiation is food is difficult because the water in food acts as a radiation shield for alpha and beta radiation. To measure food you need a HpGe Detector (High Performance Germanium) which is extremely sensitive, and the item to be tested needs to be in a heavily shield container (ie lead bricks) to shield out background radiation. If you want a food item to test, try No-Salt (Potassium Chloride) which is an active beta emitter (K40). I believe another item that is slightly radioactive is Kitty litter.
4:29 If you want a sample of real lead glass a vintage neon beer sign at around 20 years old are all made with lead glass tubing. How do I know this? I'm a neon sign glass blower.
Wasn't radioactive sand from Nevada used to mix the cement used in Philadelphia row houses in the 1940's - 1960's (the same sand that gave John Wayne and others the cancer they died from, while filming Howard Hughe's "The Mongolian" movie in Nevada, where A and H bombs were tested)?
I had some carnival glass plates and coffee cup in high school that you could do radiographs with on Tri X film ( two week exposure time). I have an old Civil Defense dosimeter that's probably useless, but looks cool...
I just got my Geiger counter recently because I’ve been seeing strange indentations in my backyard. One place in particular is about 4 to 5 foot across and has bent the fence in my backyard. The Geiger counter reading on the spot is reading 112 V/m and saying it is a harmful level on the Geiger counter. From what I have read it’s extremely high. I also have a picture of the spot. I have also observed footprints leading away from the site and nobody has been here. Who should I contact about it? I am an online teacher and disabled veteran. I served as a military policeman and I’ve never seen anything like it.
I do quite abit of TIG welding in my workshop. I've read that some or the tungsten electrodes I use are radioactive. I use 2% thoriated tungsten elctrodes when I weld stainless or chrome molly steels. I'm concerned enough that I avoid breathing the dust when I grind a point. It'd be interesting to know just how they rate compared to the banana.
How do you feel about dentist pointing the X-ray machine at our heads every 6 months? It's the only medical profession that takes an X-ray even though you show no symptoms. I also like the fact they cover my "junk" with a lead blanket then proceed to point the business end at my head....Love your content.
Medical X-Rays have the greatest effect on radio-sensitive biologic tissues. So blood-forming bone marrow, digestive tissues, and testicles. Your head, with the exception of the eye lens, really doesn't care too much about X-Rays.
AN/PDR-27 (many variations).... however most of them will need refurbishment as the old electrolytic capacitors are drying out over time. So, warm up the soldering iron.
Try your thyroid, you probably have concentrated a bit of iodine in there as well, and it is also radioactive, and cesium is also chemically as reactive, and is also concentrated.
The clicks from the unit sound about the same to me in all the testing. I also never saw the needle move. So what good is that device for low counts? None.
Many years ago, I helped judge a middle-school science fair. One student had a Geiger counter and a kit of radio-active sources, and he showed how different materials attenuated the radiation. Except... when he put some aluminum foil between the source and the counter, the count rate went UP! And it stayed up, after he removed the source. We never figured out why his aluminum food wrapping was radioactive. Is yours?
hey wouldn't you like to have a walk outdoors and see what the geiger counter says? Maybe going to locations where you expect to have higher readings for one reason or another that'd be cool I think
It's not necessarily Uranium or Thorium. Look up 'decay chain' in Wikipedia. In the Arizona desert, we often see Pb-214, Bi-214, and AC-228 during temperature inversions on our gamma spec. As a Radiation Monitoring 'expert' I can tell you that you're NOT going to get a decent read on a hand held GM Tube or Scintillator. My 'trained' ear did not detect 'greater than background' when pointing at you or the banana. You are correct, both you and the banana contain K-40, but it takes a high-purity Gamma Spec instrument to detect it.
I wonder what my tritium watch would sound like. For that matter, I wonder what wild tuna would sound like being caught in the waters off Japan. I think I have a can or two in the kitchen.
I worked in the nuclear industry for nearly two decades, specializing in radiation monitoring systems (RMS). The final project in that part of my career involved helping design and implement a wide-spectrum directional gamma detection and isotope identification system. While this system had many applications, the project sponsor was Homeland Security, intending to use it in public areas to detect "dirty bombs": The goal of Dirty Bombs isn't to destroy as much as to make a facility unusable.
The system used multiple extremely sensitive scintillation detectors arranged in a 3D array along with custom shielding to optimize both sensitivity and directionality.
The hard work was the software. Measuring radiation is one of the best examples of the need to apply statistics in the real world. The limitations of the math (and underlying physics) I was using often caused the system hardware to evolve accordingly.
As the system improved, background radiation became an increasing concern. The first issue was interference from our own very low-level radioactive sources: We had to upgrade our certified shielded storage cabinet (which weighed hundreds of pounds) to one designed to house high-level sources (which weighed over a ton). We also bought a pallet of lead bricks (another ton) to put inside the cabinet. Then we had to move the whole thing to the other side of the lab, over 30 feet away (the inverse-square law is your friend).
Then we had problems with the concrete slab our lab was on. Turned out the rebar used in the slab was lightly radioactive, so we had to put two layers of lead bricks between the lab bench and the floor.
We went quite a way down this rabbit hole. For example, the gammas we *were* looking for would also hit the shielding material we used inside the system to improve system directionality, causing an effect called "X-Ray Fluorescence", leading us to design a whole new shielding technology to minimize it (which was actually inspired by an old technology we rediscovered in some declassified Manhattan Project documents).
Watching this video made me shudder: My instrument would probably be screaming with multiple alarms were it placed anywhere near FranLab!
Gammaray spectrometers are also used for making sure that your scrap yard doesn't end up with any nasty things in it. Even stuff like pipe that was used in the oil drilling business can be too radioactive to be legal.
For those who don't know:
The "crystal" in question is about 10cm on a side or larger and if you could look at it would be clearer than water. When a gammaray is absorbed it makes a little flash of visible light. The energy from the gamma ends up as the energy in the flash. This then goes to a photo detector. The number of electrons that go through the detector depends on the photons in the flash. Thus once calibrated the system gets to measure the energy of each gamma ray instead of just making a click.
May have been the concrete itself instead of the rebar. You'll see it at freeway overpasses too where lots of concrete is used. Natural isotopes in the mix. Her test sources are far from scary. Very weak actually. Go into any antique shop and you will get much more dramatic clicks off orange pottery, uranium glass, and old radium clocks. Don't forget about thoriated camera lenses or camping lantern mantles with radioactive ash in the bottom. I see them often in the shops around town. Nothing to worry about as long as you respect it.
Ken Smith you ain’t kidding about stuff ending up in scrapyards. I just received my new Ludlum 3 and Bicron 3” nai(tl) scintillation probe last Thursday. Also got an several retired Bicron plastic portal monitors and area monitors. All of them include massive pieces of plastic scintillation material. Well over a dozen pounds, and will be wonderful for building my own area monitoring detectors.
The reason?… My buddy owns a local scrapyard and we are close to Oak Ridge national laboratory. (Home of the atom bomb)… we end up with WAY MORE than our fair share of active sources… maybe it has something to do with our proximity to Oak Ridge? My granddad worked with them years and years ago and security wasn’t as strict back then.
But the scrapyard has zero monitoring equipment whatsoever, and they have millions of tons of steel that they’ve purchased over the past decade and a half. It’s kind of an odd set up because it’s owned by two old retired guys who are just stacking this stuff up for a rainy day. They don’t crush or sell anything but copper and nonferrous metals. So every single bit of steel that they’ve ever purchased is still sitting there.
I’m setting up a few monitors there… And will be going through the yard looking for dangerous sources. Previously I had several geiger counters but they use regular Geiger-Müller tubes. But scintillation probes are hundreds of times more sensitive than even the biggest pancake tube… And can pick up hot sources from dozens of yards away or more.
Hopefully I can keep my buddy safe and find some interesting stuff in the process. I’ve already found way more active stuff than any human shit on… And that was with my old geiger counters.
@@hullinstruments I assume you've heard of the Goiania Accident then....
@@nefariumxxx
Concrete has a big K40 gamma ray peak.
Thorium shows up in a lot of odd places.
I love the dual tube design on the probe
I can spend a good part of the day to watch the Fran Lab. I learn something every time. Thanks for your sharing.
Na, you can't fool us. You just haven't seen your atomic bomb since you moved and wondered what you did with it.
I know this is irrelevant to the content, but the intro reminds me of 70's PBS shows. Feelin' nostalgic...
I think Fran’s so smart she knows a lot of subjects and always has bags of enthusiasm, very interesting a pleasure to watch 😀 look forward to seeing her next video. Thanks.
every time she does the intro it puts a big smile on my face for some reason
My great grandfather was a watchmaker for the Illinois Watch Company, he might have worked on your watch.
Fran, glowing in the lab, again !
Ooo, one of my favorite hobbies. I have a few antiques using air ionization chambers, a couple modern units using GM tubes, and I just acquired my first NaI:Th scintillator. Currently working on making my test chamber and collimator for gamma spectroscopy.
Yeh, being a geek is hard ... nobody gets what we get excited about :)
That radiation level is bananas! ;)
I would highly suggest I send elation probe. It’s so sensitive you can have it sitting next to you in the car, and find hotspots while going 60 miles an hour down the highway. It will help find the general area of a hot source, which can be pinpointed using a separate pancake probe or even a collimator/(lead shielding)around the probe to a allow directional detection.
I bought mine from Tom at Irad inc. on eBay.
I bought a Bicron nai(tl) probe, and highly recommend him. He also sells DIY kits to build a scintillation probe using plastic detection material. But they aren’t near as sensitive. So you would need a massive 5 inch probe to equal the same sensitivity as the smaller nai(tl). My bike Ron probe gives between 3000 to 5000 background.... and can pick up very weak radioactive sources from several yards away. And somewhat hotter active sources from amazingly far away.
Same type of probe they would strapped helicopters and fly over looking for uranium deposits.
You really can’t beat a ludlum model 3 running a 2 inch Bicron scintillation probe, and a pancake probe or sheet small geiger counter to help pinpointing.
Good ol' AN/PDR-27, an old friend
You have a specific piece of furniture for hanging bananas on. A banana stand. A banana pendularium. I did not know that such a thing existed, and now I do. Thus my life is enriched.
No life is complete without a banana stand!
Theoretically, it prevents pests from getting on the bananas, as long as they're not airborne :)
Except they take up space on your kitchen counter even when.....
yes, you have no bananas.
I can remember doing this in high school ecology class. Rock in the parking lot was a nice testing area.
Thanks, this was interesting and informative, as always. I suddenly want to look into getting a Geiger counter, even though I have no real need for one.
But what would *really* be cool is: an HR Giger counter...
Pronounced gee-ger bro, but we get it.
@Cliff Brooks
ruclips.net/video/XkzjvaxXHrc/видео.html
LOL
The Counter is an Military AN/PDR-27
I have the exact same model Geiger counter (along with 8 or 9 others), mine is the same re-issued refurbished (repainted gray and renamed) Department of Homeland Security version of the AN/PDR-27S renamed the HDER-G01 which was issued to emgerncy responders, etc. in 2001 / 2002 in order to get some more modern (1970's) units into the field to replace the vintage 1950's Civil Defense CDV-700 meters that some agencies were still using at the time.
A geiger counter is a really useful Instrument, i bought a dp-66 geiger counter from eBay, and i tested my collection of vintage gas mantles, and found 9 radioactive ones,containing thorium, a watch dial with radium paint, and a Rock with meta autunite on it.the meta autunite is the hottest test source i have now.the meta autunite is sealed in a ziplock plastic bag now,and everything is stored in metal boxes for shielding.
I like the way you hang and display the bananas as a warning to all the other bananas who are thinking of causing trouble.
Thanks for the video. Like you, I had collected a geiger counter (actually, I have an older one like you have, and also a newer one with a computer interface) - and I was looking for stuff to measure. I could get a tiny hit on a bit of potassium salt, or a pile of bananas - but wasn't sure it was real since it was so small.
Someone I know had some antique vasoline glass and an old (sixties era) camera lens - and so I tested those things. Wow - both of those things sent the newer geiger counter into alarm, and the older geiger counter to full scale on the lowest range. I'm not suggesting that anybody try to obtain those kinds of things, as it seems they might be unhealthy with much exposure, but they test the counters well.
I have old camera lenses that drive Geiger counters nuts.
When you fly privately to the U.S. they go over the plane with a Geiger counter.
Ah, thorium oxide, great for making optical glass :P
I was sold on these when Carl Sagan was sitting in a lava tube (Cosmos!) listening to background radiation and...cosmic rays!
love your enthusiasm!
Take that Geiger counter down to your local welding store and stick it up next to a package of Thoriated Tungsten if you want to see some serious meter deflection! All those clicks will turn into an angry buzz.
I did that and bought one. They are not all that active, quite mild actually. They are only 2% thoriated tungsten and the metal is self-shielding of it's own internal activity. You can find much better test sources in local antique shops. Orange pottery, radium clocks, uranium glass, thoriated camera lenses, etc.
@@nefariumxxx
The ones I measured have a 350 count per minute for one rod. A pack of ten was close to 4000 counts per minute. Maybe our instruments are of different sensitivity. I am using the Inspector EXP. I even get a substantial count when I wrap the tungsten with aluminum foil.
@@davidbishop5736 Well, for the price of six dollars each, I did not buy ten of them because one was boring.... but my results are less than impressive on an LND-7311 pancake probe which is the 900v version of your 500v inspector tube! Ha ha. I took some wire cutters and cut it into sections to place on the pancake probe. I am more impressed by radium or other test sources, (70,000 CPM from old radium watch hands, for example). And then there's the AM-241 screamer.... or certain vintage spark gap tubes. :)
those prices for tungsten are way more than we see in the Seattle area. A pack of 10 3/32" should be pretty close to 20 bucks. Even less than that on Amazon.
@@davidbishop5736 That sounds much better. I just got them at a local pdx welding supply a few years back. For thorium test sources, I have stronger stuff already. One is a large recon / astronomy lens which is very thick and heavy with a yellow tint. It puts out a few mR of shielded gamma and some serious high CPM to pancake probe. It's got enough that I don't keep it in the house for very long. :)
Interesting video. Listening to the clicks as the counter detects the silent drum beat of ionization in the march to entropy.
I once saw an article in a magazine (Popular Science?) about physicists who needed to salvage a gun turret from a sunken WW-2 warship in order to get non-radioactive steel. All of the steel produced since atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons was too radioactive for their project. (Wikipedia has an article on "low-background steel" in fact.)
I love the sound of decaying atoms in the morning
It would be interesting to wire up one of these to a microcontroller type of thing to collect plot-able statistics/averages over time. And if you have a bunch of them you maybe could set up an array with a synced clock source and compare timing to triangulate directionallity?
I did something like that recently. The CDV-700 civil defense Geiger counter has a headphone connector that gives 14 volt pulses. I used a potentiometer to drop the voltage, and connected it to a GPIO pin on a Raspberry Pi. Then I wrote a simple Python program to count the time needed to detect 1000 pulses. The programming went very well; the Python language has excellent functions to count low to high transitions on an input pin and excellent functions to measure time. In my home with my device, there are 12.5 counts per minute of background radiation. If Fran did something similar, she could measure how much the watch and the bananas compare to the background. Because the counts arrive at random, you have to measure over a fairly long time to get repeatable answers.
If you want to log data with a computer you might take a look at GeigerLog sourceforge.net/projects/geigerlog/ it's in python and it does support plain audio input so it should work with your Geiger counter as well.
This way you can take long measurements and save all the data
I have some radium painted aircraft instruments from my old Aeronca in the workshop. I would be interested in how much is leaking out of them.
WW2 radium illuminated instruments tended to be rather hot. Definitely get it checked so you know what precautions to take (storing it away from inhabited places or in an air tight case because of radon emission, limiting your time handling it for ionizing dose, and washing your hands immediately after for stray particulate that you might have picked up.)
Fran, I flew USAF nuclear reconnaissance on WC-135s for 20 years before retiring. If you want everyday radioactive check sources for your Geiger counter, there is Depression-Era Vaseline green glassware (Uranium in the glass), pre-war orange Fiestaware (Uranium in the glaze), and older Coleman lantern mantles (Thorium), as well as the radium instrument dials you've demonstrated. All will get your radiation instruments clicking happily.
The Americium 241 in a smoke detector will really get that thing clicking
correcto mundo!
No it won't.
@@williamnoll7935 Yes it will. Her probe uses a thin mica end window which is indeed sensitive to the screaming alpha emitted from Am-241 test sources.
@@nefariumxxx The mica is to block photons / light. The alpha remitted from the micro Curie of americium doesn't have the travel length, and is shielded by the device. I practice health physics.
@@williamnoll7935 Incorrect again. The mica end window material is very thin and used for it's ability to allow alpha to pass through and be counted. Do a simple google or youtube video search for "smoke detector geiger counter" etc. This is basic stuff to someone in the geiger counter enthusiast community like myself. The alpha emitted can travel about one inch through air, and also through that mica end window. You are confusing Aquadag which is the name of the material painted on mica in order to block photons. A pancake tube OR thin mica end window tube is designed to scan surfaces for alpha emitters / trace amounts of contamination.
I bough one of those hand held Chinese jobs and compared it to my old school unit, such as yours and believe it or not, the two units were very accurate with each other. The old one was recently certified and the Chinese one also claimed to be certified. Just so you know, for $100, it makes a nice portable "spot checker".
Loved the pencil intro! I was lucky to get a geiger counter from Electronic Goldmine. Not as nice as yours but still very interesting. Hello from Canada Fran!
Now I want a Geiger counter. If I ever get one I'll probably drive my wife nuts for about a week just going around testing everything in the house and proclaiming how many bananas.
Get a cdv-700 unless you're willing to spend like 600 dollars getting a one the cdv-700 is a good starting Geiger counter plus cheap digital Geiger counters suck
@@ethansav0892 those old civil defense units need to be calibrated.
@@jatpack3 These aren't civil defense units those are cheaper government made this is a navy Geiger counter these where much better made
I wonder what old electronic parts are radioactive. As a teen, I used to enjoy disassembling old tube TVs and other electronics and often took each component apart to find out what was inside without really worrying about potential toxins inside.
I have not used my counter in years - for good reasons. I found the really nice weston meters i use in my transmitter are radium painted, they stopped glowing a long time ago. But are still very reactive to my civil defence late 60-'s era counter. And the radium paint i bought 30 years
ago, holy crap !! The reading scared the poop out of me. Made a lead box and put it in the sump pump hole in the basement.
Some of my old tube equipment is more reactive than i would like, i got thru two rooms and stopped playing with the counter.
I look at it this way, i've had the stuff since the 80's and it has failed to kill me yet. I will not be around much longer anyway so i will take my chances with whatever exposure i get. Tobacco use will do me in before exposure will.
aye, make sure you label it as radioactive so that even if you pass... others wont discover it and go about giving themselves future cancer.
Interestingly, Ebay was flooded with the familiar yellow handheld radiation survey meters with the "CD" (Civil Defense) stickers on the side several years back. I'm guessing our local EOCs decided to finally let them go, 50 years after the Cold War. I bought one, and I must say, if you got any deflection of the needle, in any range, you were in trouble. If the highest range read anything, you were most likely looking at a mushroom cloud.
I calibrated similar survey meters, Geiger counters, ion chambers and personal dosimeters, mostly for ND testing of welds (space program). We have a Cs-137 source up to 1R. I also cal'd radiation alarms that were installed above warehouse doors etc. that were pretty sensitive (nowhere near as sensitive as Bob Cunningham's post) and would set off an alarm/beacons at roughly 0.1mR/hr.
And Barium Oxide and Thorium impregnated Tungsten make great electron cathodes when heated. Oh yeah.
I’m pretty sure I have the same Geiger muller tube. The most shocking item I found was halogen light bulbs… not the filament, not the trapped gas, just the glass that enclosed them.
For other sources of natural radiaition that can be detected with hand-held instruments: pallet of water softener salt; 'stick' weld rods, Coleman Lantern mantles, 'old' orange Fiesta Ware plates
I love this stuff of information!😊
@Fran Blanche >>> 'Where' did you purchase that geiger counter from?
After I got a nuclear stress test, I amused my kids by lighting up my Geiger counter when I walked into the room.
I got a letter from the lab stating that I had received the test in case I set off a Homeland Security radiation detector.
What kind of counter are you using and where would one get one?
I don't know exatly how I came here, but this woman seems really nice and this seems like good content
I used to have a geigermuller counter driven by mini baby tubes and a highvoltage transformer driven via a relay. The relay was very noisy so i replace that part with a two transistor multivib circuit. Loved it and background radiation was heavier on rainy days !
yep, see "radon washout".
Fran, radiant as always.
Geiger counters are very fun, mine is based on the SBM-20 tube so won't detect alpha emission but it's always amusing to find radioactive things where you don't expect them.
Great video Fran =D I sent an old sig gen to JaysVintageJunk recently - first thing he did was check it for radioactivity, and low and behold it was radioactive!!! =O The switches were ex RAF and have glass beads that glow in the dark (and emit radiation). I laughed lol, not what I expected!
Try a smoke alarm, or the mantle from an old parrafin lamp. The mantle will jump off the scale. (the older mantles)
Have you tried camera lenses made in the 1960's?Major manufacturers back then had at least one lens with radioactive glass elements..........................
You are such a trip fran :) I ordered some old cast iron from russia, and so I just had to use that as an excuse to get a geiger counter. My sister has a ton of old glass and rocks too. But I don't think I'll need an excuse to pull it out :) Always wanted one.
This was fun! Thanks!
When was the last time your Geiger counter was calibrated?
Is that GMC an AN/PDR-27S?
Curious as I just acquired a few for me collection.
This is so cool... I was always ads for seeing geiger counter kits when I was a kid, but could never afford one... now that I can afford one, no more kits.
There are dozens of kits, really. Check ebay :)
@@mfbfreak I've seen those... Nowhere near as accurate and robust as the old kits.
@@ReverendFuzzy Well, you weren't suggesting they had to be super high quality things ;)
If it's just a circuit board, you can make it as robust as you want.
@@mfbfreak If you'll read back, you'll note I said "when I was a kid"... back then, the kits were nothing but "high quality things". You assumed the rest.
I remember my first cdv-700 anton no.5
What model detector is that ?
Try with camping gas lamp mesh
What you should consider trying is a scintillation detector which can also provide you the energy output. You need a MultiChannel Analyser which creates a plot of the counter energies. Something like a NaI:Th scintillation detector. the detector is coupled with a PhotoMultiplier tube.
Another interesting experiment is to plot radiation over a period of a month. When it rains there is a spike of radiation and the rain causes Radon emissions to increase. You can also detect solar storms as it increases radiation.
Detecting radiation is food is difficult because the water in food acts as a radiation shield for alpha and beta radiation. To measure food you need a HpGe Detector (High Performance Germanium) which is extremely sensitive, and the item to be tested needs to be in a heavily shield container (ie lead bricks) to shield out background radiation.
If you want a food item to test, try No-Salt (Potassium Chloride) which is an active beta emitter (K40). I believe another item that is slightly radioactive is Kitty litter.
You could swap the analog display for an arduino with a text only display counting the clicks
4:29 If you want a sample of real lead glass a vintage neon beer sign at around 20 years old are all made with lead glass tubing. How do I know this? I'm a neon sign glass blower.
Have you checked out any other counters and can review or recommend one? Or point us to some reviews? Thanks!
Wasn't radioactive sand from Nevada used to mix the cement used in Philadelphia row houses in the 1940's - 1960's (the same sand that gave John Wayne and others the cancer they died from, while filming Howard Hughe's "The Mongolian" movie in Nevada, where A and H bombs were tested)?
I had some carnival glass plates and coffee cup in high school that you could do radiographs with on Tri X film ( two week exposure time). I have an old Civil Defense dosimeter that's probably useless, but looks cool...
I just got my Geiger counter recently because I’ve been seeing strange indentations in my backyard. One place in particular is about 4 to 5 foot across and has bent the fence in my backyard. The Geiger counter reading on the spot is reading 112 V/m and saying it is a harmful level on the Geiger counter. From what I have read it’s extremely high. I also have a picture of the spot. I have also observed footprints leading away from the site and nobody has been here. Who should I contact about it? I am an online teacher and disabled veteran. I served as a military policeman and I’ve never seen anything like it.
I do quite abit of TIG welding in my workshop. I've read that some or the tungsten electrodes I use are radioactive. I use 2% thoriated tungsten elctrodes when I weld stainless or chrome molly steels. I'm concerned enough that I avoid breathing the dust when I grind a point. It'd be interesting to know just how they rate compared to the banana.
they are generally safe, thorium is not super radioactive and the lifted alloy amount is little.... i'd not breath the dust anyways
Stop breathing banana dust.
How about pointing it at the sun with different objects in between to measure the absorption ?
I have this counter too! Along with many others…
How do you feel about dentist pointing the X-ray machine at our heads every 6 months? It's the only medical profession that takes an X-ray even though you show no symptoms. I also like the fact they cover my "junk" with a lead blanket then proceed to point the business end at my head....Love your content.
My dentist doesn't cover mine with a blanket.
Medical X-Rays have the greatest effect on radio-sensitive biologic tissues. So blood-forming bone marrow, digestive tissues, and testicles. Your head, with the exception of the eye lens, really doesn't care too much about X-Rays.
@@williamnoll7935 The brain is the most important organ, I'll error on the side of caution.
Ever heard of polonium anti static brushes?
Give that thing a little Pripyat action. 💥
Pacific ocean fish sold to the public..... Fukushima..?
Interesting test👍😀
Thanks for sharing 👍😀
Hi Fran, please give us a model number to search. I have a couple of old Victoreen models and a RADEX RD1503.
AN/PDR-27 (many variations).... however most of them will need refurbishment as the old electrolytic capacitors are drying out over time. So, warm up the soldering iron.
@@nefariumxxx Awesome! and Thanks!
Eye fort a Geiger counter counted, seems it don't; it just says everyfink is 'just above background' - Diz A. Pointing.
Another woman of science on RUclips is bionerd23 she is very knowledgeable about radiation
It's pity, she abandoned her channel. In favor of cycling, as she stated.
janovlk yeah I love her content and ran out of stuff to watch
Fran has an actual banana stand! Shades of "Arrested Development".
And... now this song is stuck in my head.
Try your thyroid, you probably have concentrated a bit of iodine in there as well, and it is also radioactive, and cesium is also chemically as reactive, and is also concentrated.
iodine 131 has a half-life of just 8 days... so... fizzles out quickly.
5:40 Fran, you're slightly radiant :)
非常棒的推送🎉
The clicks from the unit sound about the same to me in all the testing. I also never saw the needle move. So what good is that device for low counts? None.
I heard smoke alarms are radioactive. Are they something to avoid. For example don't sleep with one under your pillow?
Many years ago, I helped judge a middle-school science fair. One student had a Geiger counter and a kit of radio-active sources, and he showed how different materials attenuated the radiation. Except... when he put some aluminum foil between the source and the counter, the count rate went UP! And it stayed up, after he removed the source. We never figured out why his aluminum food wrapping was radioactive. Is yours?
How about pointing it at a Cathode Ray Tube/old TV or Monitor/Oscilloscope.
When they're energized or when simply off?
hey wouldn't you like to have a walk outdoors and see what the geiger counter says? Maybe going to locations where you expect to have higher readings for one reason or another
that'd be cool I think
Hi Fran! :D
Always love your work, your channel is so underrated. 💙
How about the small counters that connect to an iPhone?
Hi Fran, what's the model of counter that you're using?
It's not necessarily Uranium or Thorium. Look up 'decay chain' in Wikipedia. In the Arizona desert, we often see Pb-214, Bi-214, and AC-228 during temperature inversions on our gamma spec. As a Radiation Monitoring 'expert' I can tell you that you're NOT going to get a decent read on a hand held GM Tube or Scintillator. My 'trained' ear did not detect 'greater than background' when pointing at you or the banana. You are correct, both you and the banana contain K-40, but it takes a high-purity Gamma Spec instrument to detect it.
So, what did I do last night? Programmed Node Red to talk to my WiZ lights... WHY? ...Because I don't own a Geiger counter! :)
avery kitchen shude have a Geiger Counter
♥️ thanks Fran
Try pointing it at an ionizing smoke detector! Americium231!
I love you, Fran!
I wonder what my tritium watch would sound like. For that matter, I wonder what wild tuna would sound like being caught in the waters off Japan. I think I have a can or two in the kitchen.
I thought about getting one to take to the supermarket to check out fruits and veg conning from California because, you know, Fukushima