my favorite part is when it says fuck it and just screams. •••---••• •••---••• •••---••• *passes 690 uSV/h* •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
It was nice. I would have like to have seen him use blue for negative to differentiate from green neutral, but he probably didn't have blue fluorescent paint. Or the blue showed up as green on camera or something.
Thanks to this video, I purchased my own RadiaScan. Quite happily, the most radioactive thing I found in my house was a stack of napkins made from recycled material.
With the possible exception of needing to handle the uranium ore with such care...the biggest worry there is the radon--you couldn't get enough on your hands to cause any harm...
@@jomiar309 I mean I'd assume the worry is more about breathing in particulate from the uranium ore, not just being near it, right? It's not hot enough to be an immediate danger in the short-term but you do not want pitchblende dust in your lungs
I really appreciate your attention to detail and clear explanations! I hope more and more people watch your videos and learn from them. Also, your accent is very pleasant to listen to. :)
I have a GQ gieger counter, and I think it's click is probably one of the most iconic gieger counter sounds. I haven't found anything radioactive above 50 CPM on my property, but I really like taking measurements of things, and a gieger counter is one the tools that you will likely never really need, but when you do need it, you really need it.
Can you please test a cathode ray tube monitor (maybe an old tv) with your new device Thanks btw why is the reading still at 40 µSv when you placed them on the dinnerplate at 10:57 is it due to Potassium decay?
@@swabianscience Yes, one common brand which used uranium glazes was Fiestaware. It wasn't done for the radioactivity but rather for the properties of uranium compounds as dyes.
@@vamp97 Even if all of your dishes were coated in uranium based glaze, it wouldn't be dangerous. The amount of radioactivity is tiny (You'd have to hold it next to you for years to significantly increase your cancer risk), the only danger is when the glaze is damaged, it emits uranium dust, which you really don't want to breathe.
I store my strongest samples in a 'cage' of multiple layers of concrete garden tiles outside my house. Blocks the radiation to a tolerable level :) Thanks for watching!
@ louis tournas thanks for your comment but the smoke detector produces ions and reads only a disruptive molecule that reduces the ability of ions to move. It doesn’t give an actual reading showing how many negative or positive ions present. Both smoke detectors and emergency lights contain radioactive substances and if you don’t know what you are doing best not to play with them.
Out of all my (many, many) subs, this is one of the few where I've never watched a video and been, like, "meh". Always interesting, always informative.
Your video editing has gotten so much more elaborate and sophisticated if you have an editor then give them my remarks and if you are doing it yourself then kudos to you and well done!
Brian, I have 4 observations: 1. Very nice video, as always. Congratulations! 2. I found it very interesting how your new RadiaScan beeps S.O.S. in morse code, until it reaches about 700 uSv/h, when it goes "oh my god get me the hell out of here" constant beep mode. 3. I didn't understand why the uraninite was colder than the table (that was, presumably, at ambient temperature). 4. I also didn't understand why your Soeks and GammaScout devices zeroed the readings in 2015 and did detect radioactivity at this time... Thanks and best wishes!!
@@0XAN A dosimeter is technically a geiger counter that can also count a the accumulated doese. A radiometer can only estimate the current level in real-time. Technically the Radiascan is all of that
Ahhh what a cool video!!! I had to pause it in the beginning to look up antimatter and it was a super intriguing subject, and the radition stuff was really cool as well! I wish I could support you on patreon but as I only turn 16 this year that's not possible. However, if you were to sell merch, especially something like shirts or pins of your wheel of hazards I'd definitely buy something like the nerd I am XD
By the way, i have to mention it but i think i saw a meteor yesterday! I would've thought it was some sort of firework or something but it made no sound, it was a orange/yellow kinda fire colour, sparks came of the end, its soared for maybe 1-3 seconds before disappearing pretty high up but much closer than the few stars that had come out and it was the most amazing thing ever
Thank you very much, Indra. Patreon support is totally optional. It's an even bigger support to always watch, like and comment on my videos like you do. That matters more! I don't have plans for merchandise at the moment, but who knows what the future will bring. I dream of a Brainiac75 line of neodymium magnets. All grade N52 looking good in black epoxy with my yellow logo on them x) But your suggestions are more likely to be realized.
Sure sounds like a shooting star. The sparks at the end were the meteor breaking up in small parts from the extreme friction heat etc. when entering the Earth's atmosphere. Very cool display indeed - congratulations :o)
Hi braniac! Been watching for almost 3 years now, i think it would be very cool if you did a tour of where you store all of your samples/magnets/everything. Perhaps a future video idea?
Yep, I haven't tested the functions of the 701 much yet, but it sure seems to work well as the video hopefully shows. It even has alpha, beta and gamma modes that I haven't had the time to test yet. Thanks for watching!
Very weakly radioactive, especially compared to the pitchblende he showed in the video. There are some VERY spicy radium items out there (not the usual watches and clocks), but erm, those aren't so common in antique shops (thankfully!)
I love looking for radioactive rocks in the woods and I was thinking about getting gamma scout but now I think I'll go with radiascan considering it outperform gamma scout and it's also cheaper!
To go into a bit more detail about tritium turning into helium-3, this is done through a process called Beta Decay, because when it happens, a beta particle is emitted from a nucleus [a high energy electron/positron] In the case of tritium, a neutron was turning into a proton spontaneously. This happened because the quarks that make up the neutron are capable of changing into other kinds of quarks by exchanging a type of particle known as an Intermediate Vector Boson. In this case, it is a W- Boson, which can be thought of as a kind of messanger particle. To avoid a whole lecture about quantum electrodynamics and field theory, the gist is that while this decay process is happening, a beta particle and antineutrino are being created in a pair. Every time this process happens, they always come in pairs. Neutrons have a higher rest mass than protons. Essentially, it is that extra energy that goes into the beta particle and the antineutrino. There are also some photons involved but those aren't that important. This can also happen with protons becoming neutrons. It's called inverse beta decay, and it happens whenever you have a high energy particle, usually a beta particle or high energy neutrino smash into a proton. The kinetic energy of the collision supplies the activation energy needed to kickstart the decay process. An up quark in the proton by way of a W+ Boson changes into a down quark, and the nuclear potential energy between those quarks rises, giving the resulting neutron the extra rest mass. Some photons, neutrinos, and a positron is also given off as the total energy of the neutron rejects the excess energy from the original collision. After all, quantum particles really love being in their ground states.
Ok that was actually awesome, I extremely enjoyed watching that and also remembering that I've already watched the other one from the 2015 , you are real great and I extremely appreciated this video the radiation really does scare me I hope you stay safe keep up the amazing work that you are doing I can't wait to see your next video PS greetings from Iran 🌷😊
Thanks, Abteen. The pitchblende sample does need to be treated with respect, but for short amounts of time near it, it's no problem. I actually received less of a radiation dose by filming this video that I would receive on an international flight (cosmic radiation in 10 km's height is a thing...). Thanks for watching once again and greetings back from Denmark.
And touching the actual pitchblende sample with the detector's window is a VERY bad idea. Once the insides get contaminated you can just throw the detector away, good luck cleaning it.
Interestingly there is more to the x-rays coming from the tritium light sources. While a large part is due to Bremsstrahlung at 5-15keV, there are also pretty strong peaks corresponding to the characteristic x-ray spectrum of zinc, especially the K_alpha and K_beta emissions. However there is still practically nothing coming from these. As counters are calibrated to 662keV Cs137 emissions, they overestimate the dose by a factor of around 70. And of course it's not actually a full body dose. I once calculated the yearly dose for a key-chain with ~200Bq, ~10keV per gamma, 1/2 absorbed (people don't usually swallow their keys :P), 1/2 of the time wearing they key on you. I get around 2.5 micSv for a year, so around 1000-2000 times less than background and around as much as I got from my 2 day trip to Chernobyl, or around 2h of flying... Considering less than 1/2 is actually absorbed since people aren't infinite planes and people don't have their keys on them half of all time, it's probably a factor 5 or so lower still. All in all, the probability of impressing a potential girlfriend with one of these far far outweighs the risk of it! :D
Where did you get 200 Bq? I think the tritium light sources are more like 10^9 Bq. However, once you work out how much of the super low-energy x-rays are produced and actually make it out of the glass vial, it becomes only a few counts per second.
For example, I have a Betatorch which is a British military tritium illumminator which is about the same surface brightness as a keychain tritium light but the surface area is much larger (it is designed to provide just enough light that you could read a map in total darkness but not be seen more than about 20 meters away). It has 1.9 Curies of tritium (7x10^10 Bq)
@@sbreheny I held of in front of a scintillating counter and got ~100Bq, bit below. So ~200 or in that range total. It was a Nite GlowRing if I remember correctly. Honestly somewhat unscientific since the scintillators aren't really meant for these low energies. I wouldn't think it's far off the actual value but there is no way to know for sure other than using an x-ray detector. But in the end even if it's a factor of 100 greater, it's still less than a tenth of background and personally wouldn't bother me. Edit: oh you are saying you would expect less. Well could be, I really just grabbed the next best scint counter while doing student labs. Beforehand that I expected less as well, especially because IAEA has a paper that speaks of 28mic penetration depth of the x-rays through glass.
@@TiSapph So you're saying you did extensive math based on... waving a random-shape and random-area source in front of a random-shape and random-volume scintillation detector that only shows its own estimated total absorbed dose? Yeah... nice.
@@Spirit532 Um not quite? It's a scintillation counter, not spectrometer. It only counts the number of pulses, not their amplitudes. And then I did a fairly simple one line order of magnitude calculation to get a sense of how much dose one of these gives you. Also I think it's seems pretty fair so assume that if you have a small object on a decently large detector, the total activity is going to be around 2-3 times that much. Even if it's actually like a factor of 5, whatever it's an order of magnitude calculation. Don't quite get what the issue is
Wow! Another excellent video! How did you do the hydrogen atom scene at 2:53? I'd guess that's some fluorescent balls, but how did you make the electron spin at first? PS: What a shame that all the Geiger counters are outside my budget... TBH, the only use I'd have for them is my small americium sample from a smoke detector.
I'm guessing they are styrofoam balls and painted with phosphorescent paint. I bought my geiger counter back in 2010 on Ebay. It is a CDV-700 model made in the 60s. Back then, people were trying to get rid of them. I bought it for 35$. Since the Fukushima disaster, the prices on them went up to 120$ and more. Everyone started to sell potassium iodide (KI) pills and the price of raw potassium iodide trippled. Fortunately, I had also bought 1 kg of KI.
I would take a look at eBay. There’s a guy selling premade ready to go counters including an SBT10a tube!!! $100 from Lithuania I know that isn’t cheap… But that tube is capable of alpha beta and gamma… and the tube could have cost just as much as the entire set up a few years ago! And the counter he sells is just as capable as the radiascan 701A. In my opinion. I know $100 is still a lot… But he has counters starting at $27! And you can always add a nicer tube when you can afford it. His are the only ones I found that are easily adjustable so that you can use different tubes. Each tube requires different voltages and his has built in quick and efficient adjustment. If you like building electronics kits and are quite handy… The GKB5 kit is great! Also the GK-plus is wonderful. The gentleman who sells them is the original designer. His designs have been cloned and copied from China, Lithuania, and all over the world. You can find him at
For strong samples, in my opinion it’s a good idea to have a saturation indicator on the Geiger counter. I’ve had several PET scans done (injected each time with ~12 mCi of F-18 FDG), and for several hours afterward, I can drive my Inspector+ (which has a 2-inch pancake tube) into saturation, by holding it near my body.
When you change the battery, make sure you have the device "on life support" with another power source to hold any volatile memory. Manufactures do this so that if you replace the cell, the unit will stop working. Also, Is there a Dallas chip on the board? Those have batteries to back their circuits potted into the bottom of them. Don't let the power fall out completely!
I love how the RadiaScan releases an S.O.S in morse code, very creepy
Being the smart ass I am, I searched for "morse" b/f I was going to add the same comment.
my favorite part is when it says fuck it and just screams.
•••---••• •••---••• •••---••• *passes 690 uSV/h* •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
That alarm is meant to be warn when walking around chernobyl or something, to alert you when you are wandering into a hot zone.
@@RKSNomad but isnt sos ...---...
@@superzucc7343 yeah... in unsure what your point is.
That's one chicken scanner - it sends out SOS when radiated.
Peter Riis i guess that's to warn the handler to get the hell out of wherever they're scanning immediately
I hope that feature can be turned off. Otherwise I'd be very tempted to do a photonic induction on the thing.
@@plushifoxed
Really?
@@bdf2718
A photonic induction?
@@Peter_Riis_DK
ruclips.net/video/Ex8xT9Avf48/видео.html
Nice illustration with the glowing balls
Yeah that looked really cool
I thought it was CGI lol
Absolutely! Looked like it was made on a computer until the hand came in :D
It was nice. I would have like to have seen him use blue for negative to differentiate from green neutral, but he probably didn't have blue fluorescent paint. Or the blue showed up as green on camera or something.
Why am I dirty minded
Thats one serious and very creepy geiger counter lol
It immediately sends out SOS on Morse code damn
It's a warning to get the hell out of there.
Another outstanding video my friend
Dan Festag o0
Thanks to this video, I purchased my own RadiaScan. Quite happily, the most radioactive thing I found in my house was a stack of napkins made from recycled material.
Make more videos with radioactive stuff, love it
As a Nuclear Physics student, this "home" video is truly pretty accurate
With the possible exception of needing to handle the uranium ore with such care...the biggest worry there is the radon--you couldn't get enough on your hands to cause any harm...
@@jomiar309 I mean I'd assume the worry is more about breathing in particulate from the uranium ore, not just being near it, right? It's not hot enough to be an immediate danger in the short-term but you do not want pitchblende dust in your lungs
I gotta say... That little atomic demonstration was pretty awesome.
Love the visualisation of the atomic nucleus! Especially the neutrino :) It was really good and effective.
Brainiac, your videos have this special kind of atmosphere / feel to it, please never change this. It's sooooo moody
Nice! I was just watching your videos, thank you for the exemplary work!
Same
Thank you, John. You certainly were here fast ;) More to come!
I'm speechless! Good luck in the future! The meter is singing to the user when in high levels :p
I really appreciate your attention to detail and clear explanations! I hope more and more people watch your videos and learn from them. Also, your accent is very pleasant to listen to. :)
Love this channel what a voice!
I've been following you since the first geiger counter video!
So glad you're still on youtube :)
I have a GQ gieger counter, and I think it's click is probably one of the most iconic gieger counter sounds. I haven't found anything radioactive above 50 CPM on my property, but I really like taking measurements of things, and a gieger counter is one the tools that you will likely never really need, but when you do need it, you really need it.
Cool😊
Production quality on this video was amazing. So much more work being put into the video. loved it.
I like how the RadiaScan uses SOS in Morse code to warn the user.
Sehr interessantes Video! Weiter so!
Can you please test a cathode ray tube monitor (maybe an old tv) with your new device
Thanks
btw why is the reading still at 40 µSv when you placed them on the dinnerplate at 10:57
is it due to Potassium decay?
I think it's one of his uranium coated plates, so it's quite radioactive by itself if you mean that
@@swabianscience Yes, one common brand which used uranium glazes was Fiestaware. It wasn't done for the radioactivity but rather for the properties of uranium compounds as dyes.
@@swabianscience thank goodness for the context, I was about to be scared of all my dinnerware...
@@vamp97 Even if all of your dishes were coated in uranium based glaze, it wouldn't be dangerous. The amount of radioactivity is tiny (You'd have to hold it next to you for years to significantly increase your cancer risk), the only danger is when the glaze is damaged, it emits uranium dust, which you really don't want to breathe.
"This video features radioactive items" = instant thumbs up from me!
The Geiger counter beeping and the creepy music in the background...
Gives me chills.
So, where do you store those? In your noisy neighbor's yard?
I might put them in the middle of some water canisters to absorb the radiation.
I store my strongest samples in a 'cage' of multiple layers of concrete garden tiles outside my house. Blocks the radiation to a tolerable level :) Thanks for watching!
What do you know about ions? What can be used to detect and read how many are being produced.
@@21gioni :
Smoke alarms with Am241 measure the number of ions in the air near the Am241 source.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_detector#Ionization
@ louis tournas thanks for your comment but the smoke detector produces ions and reads only a disruptive molecule that reduces the ability of ions to move. It doesn’t give an actual reading showing how many negative or positive ions present.
Both smoke detectors and emergency lights contain radioactive substances and if you don’t know what you are doing best not to play with them.
Just like all your other videos, fantastic! Thank you and keep the good work
The quality of this video is insane.
Thank you so much for the info! I just ordered my own Radiascan-701A
As always a terrifically interesting and educational video! Thank you!
Awesome, I love it when you do these kind of videos! :D
You're just amazing. Thanks to you we can learn more about this things!
Amazing video mate, absolutely loved it :)
Out of all my (many, many) subs, this is one of the few where I've never watched a video and been, like, "meh". Always interesting, always informative.
I know it's been more than 2 years, but I'd absolutely love to see more radioactive experiments!
You have a nice channel with nice videos! Really nice!
This is such a great demonstration. If I ever work at a national lab again, I'm definitely getting a 701a.
You won't
Love what your doing dude Keep it up!!!!
Great video! I would love to do more stuff like this on our page. Keep up the cool stuff.
Always interesting and educational. Thank you.
Nuclear physics are absolutely wicked, thanks for the awesome stuff !
Your video editing has gotten so much more elaborate and sophisticated if you have an editor then give them my remarks and if you are doing it yourself then kudos to you and well done!
@3:00 ish, that was a very nice illustration of the elements. I feel we need more of that. ;)
Love your vids as always!
Quality content as per usual
awesome video as always!
Great video mate! Subscribed!
Brian, I have 4 observations:
1. Very nice video, as always. Congratulations!
2. I found it very interesting how your new RadiaScan beeps S.O.S. in morse code, until it reaches about 700 uSv/h, when it goes "oh my god get me the hell out of here" constant beep mode.
3. I didn't understand why the uraninite was colder than the table (that was, presumably, at ambient temperature).
4. I also didn't understand why your Soeks and GammaScout devices zeroed the readings in 2015 and did detect radioactivity at this time...
Thanks and best wishes!!
RadiaScan 701A is a Russian device. I have one and it's one of the best radiometers out there. By the way, hi from Russia.
hi there, it's a geiger counter, or just a dosimeter?
@@0XAN A dosimeter is technically a geiger counter that can also count a the accumulated doese. A radiometer can only estimate the current level in real-time. Technically the Radiascan is all of that
Like always, Perfect video :)
Du er under vurderet og fortjener klart flere subscribers!!
Elsker dine videoer! :D
Yes would like to see the battery replacement. Also any schematics that you can find on the circuit board.
Thanks for the vid.
A schematic of a turd emoji would do it justice!
I like how they don't have a word for Bremsstraglung :D
"Slowing Down Radiation" (SDR) or "Braking Radiation" (BR) is too long!
Ahhh what a cool video!!! I had to pause it in the beginning to look up antimatter and it was a super intriguing subject, and the radition stuff was really cool as well! I wish I could support you on patreon but as I only turn 16 this year that's not possible. However, if you were to sell merch, especially something like shirts or pins of your wheel of hazards I'd definitely buy something like the nerd I am XD
By the way, i have to mention it but i think i saw a meteor yesterday! I would've thought it was some sort of firework or something but it made no sound, it was a orange/yellow kinda fire colour, sparks came of the end, its soared for maybe 1-3 seconds before disappearing pretty high up but much closer than the few stars that had come out and it was the most amazing thing ever
Thank you very much, Indra. Patreon support is totally optional. It's an even bigger support to always watch, like and comment on my videos like you do. That matters more! I don't have plans for merchandise at the moment, but who knows what the future will bring. I dream of a Brainiac75 line of neodymium magnets. All grade N52 looking good in black epoxy with my yellow logo on them x) But your suggestions are more likely to be realized.
Sure sounds like a shooting star. The sparks at the end were the meteor breaking up in small parts from the extreme friction heat etc. when entering the Earth's atmosphere. Very cool display indeed - congratulations :o)
When the equipment screams in morse, you know your boned
you're*
And no, you are not boned. But you have to pay attention.
9:57 my brain :- touch it
Really fine presentation.
the atomic diagram was really cool and informative! very easy to understand.
Hi braniac! Been watching for almost 3 years now, i think it would be very cool if you did a tour of where you store all of your samples/magnets/everything. Perhaps a future video idea?
Amazing
The visualisation of tritium was the best and amazing i have seen
I learn so much Chemistry from you than in school
Thnx xd
Very informative. That 701 has nice clever features built in. Especially that discriminator system.
Yep, I haven't tested the functions of the 701 much yet, but it sure seems to work well as the video hopefully shows. It even has alpha, beta and gamma modes that I haven't had the time to test yet. Thanks for watching!
I absolutely want to see an attempted battery change. great stuff as always
That chunk of radioactive material is mad do you have a lead container to store it ???, this has to be my favorite video from you
Quality > quantity I love your videos and your attention to detail mate.
woaw have I bin here for more than 4 years, time realy flies by
Antimatter matters
You should take them with you to thrift stores. There are stupendously radioactive things lying around there, mostly glazed ceramics.
Very weakly radioactive, especially compared to the pitchblende he showed in the video. There are some VERY spicy radium items out there (not the usual watches and clocks), but erm, those aren't so common in antique shops (thankfully!)
Tak! Oh, and it would be cool to see you bring out the soldering iron!
Nice. The forbidden spicy rocks are back
i just want to see moreee , i get adicted to your videos
I HAVE A MIGHTY NEED FOR THAT MEMORIAL PIECE
Great work👍
I love looking for radioactive rocks in the woods and I was thinking about getting gamma scout but now I think I'll go with radiascan considering it outperform gamma scout and it's also cheaper!
To go into a bit more detail about tritium turning into helium-3, this is done through a process called Beta Decay, because when it happens, a beta particle is emitted from a nucleus [a high energy electron/positron]
In the case of tritium, a neutron was turning into a proton spontaneously. This happened because the quarks that make up the neutron are capable of changing into other kinds of quarks by exchanging a type of particle known as an Intermediate Vector Boson. In this case, it is a W- Boson, which can be thought of as a kind of messanger particle.
To avoid a whole lecture about quantum electrodynamics and field theory, the gist is that while this decay process is happening, a beta particle and antineutrino are being created in a pair. Every time this process happens, they always come in pairs.
Neutrons have a higher rest mass than protons. Essentially, it is that extra energy that goes into the beta particle and the antineutrino. There are also some photons involved but those aren't that important.
This can also happen with protons becoming neutrons. It's called inverse beta decay, and it happens whenever you have a high energy particle, usually a beta particle or high energy neutrino smash into a proton.
The kinetic energy of the collision supplies the activation energy needed to kickstart the decay process. An up quark in the proton by way of a W+ Boson changes into a down quark, and the nuclear potential energy between those quarks rises, giving the resulting neutron the extra rest mass.
Some photons, neutrinos, and a positron is also given off as the total energy of the neutron rejects the excess energy from the original collision. After all, quantum particles really love being in their ground states.
oof the quantum jokes. Now to figure out where they're going
Plates made in the "C" nation being radioactive -- these are the classic civil defense props.
tillykke med 500 tusind subs!!! håber at du får 1 million :)
At 2:33 it says "SOS" in Morse Code. (RadiaScan-701A)
Ok that was actually awesome, I extremely enjoyed watching that and also remembering that I've already watched the other one from the 2015 , you are real great and I extremely appreciated this video the radiation really does scare me I hope you stay safe keep up the amazing work that you are doing I can't wait to see your next video
PS greetings from Iran 🌷😊
Thanks, Abteen. The pitchblende sample does need to be treated with respect, but for short amounts of time near it, it's no problem. I actually received less of a radiation dose by filming this video that I would receive on an international flight (cosmic radiation in 10 km's height is a thing...). Thanks for watching once again and greetings back from Denmark.
Ok you proved that you are a crazy man good point!
great vid keep them coming
I love you dr. Brainiac
I would advise protecting your counters with a sealable bag. You don't want the meters to get contaminated with radioactive ores.
And touching the actual pitchblende sample with the detector's window is a VERY bad idea.
Once the insides get contaminated you can just throw the detector away, good luck cleaning it.
Am i the only one who loves the beep sound of the radioactivity sensors make?
Great video! The information about tritium is very interesting. I have one of those vials on my keychain so I can find my keys in the dark.
I like the way you show atoms with floressing materials.
thanks for the recommendation
radioactive material :
geiger counter : lets send a SOS signal even though nobody cares
Interestingly there is more to the x-rays coming from the tritium light sources. While a large part is due to Bremsstrahlung at 5-15keV, there are also pretty strong peaks corresponding to the characteristic x-ray spectrum of zinc, especially the K_alpha and K_beta emissions.
However there is still practically nothing coming from these. As counters are calibrated to 662keV Cs137 emissions, they overestimate the dose by a factor of around 70. And of course it's not actually a full body dose.
I once calculated the yearly dose for a key-chain with ~200Bq, ~10keV per gamma, 1/2 absorbed (people don't usually swallow their keys :P), 1/2 of the time wearing they key on you. I get around 2.5 micSv for a year, so around 1000-2000 times less than background and around as much as I got from my 2 day trip to Chernobyl, or around 2h of flying... Considering less than 1/2 is actually absorbed since people aren't infinite planes and people don't have their keys on them half of all time, it's probably a factor 5 or so lower still.
All in all, the probability of impressing a potential girlfriend with one of these far far outweighs the risk of it! :D
Where did you get 200 Bq? I think the tritium light sources are more like 10^9 Bq. However, once you work out how much of the super low-energy x-rays are produced and actually make it out of the glass vial, it becomes only a few counts per second.
For example, I have a Betatorch which is a British military tritium illumminator which is about the same surface brightness as a keychain tritium light but the surface area is much larger (it is designed to provide just enough light that you could read a map in total darkness but not be seen more than about 20 meters away). It has 1.9 Curies of tritium (7x10^10 Bq)
@@sbreheny I held of in front of a scintillating counter and got ~100Bq, bit below. So ~200 or in that range total. It was a Nite GlowRing if I remember correctly.
Honestly somewhat unscientific since the scintillators aren't really meant for these low energies. I wouldn't think it's far off the actual value but there is no way to know for sure other than using an x-ray detector.
But in the end even if it's a factor of 100 greater, it's still less than a tenth of background and personally wouldn't bother me.
Edit: oh you are saying you would expect less. Well could be, I really just grabbed the next best scint counter while doing student labs.
Beforehand that I expected less as well, especially because IAEA has a paper that speaks of 28mic penetration depth of the x-rays through glass.
@@TiSapph So you're saying you did extensive math based on... waving a random-shape and random-area source in front of a random-shape and random-volume scintillation detector that only shows its own estimated total absorbed dose?
Yeah... nice.
@@Spirit532 Um not quite? It's a scintillation counter, not spectrometer. It only counts the number of pulses, not their amplitudes.
And then I did a fairly simple one line order of magnitude calculation to get a sense of how much dose one of these gives you.
Also I think it's seems pretty fair so assume that if you have a small object on a decently large detector, the total activity is going to be around 2-3 times that much. Even if it's actually like a factor of 5, whatever it's an order of magnitude calculation. Don't quite get what the issue is
I like the one counter said SOS in Morse.
Nicely done!
Wow! Another excellent video! How did you do the hydrogen atom scene at 2:53? I'd guess that's some fluorescent balls, but how did you make the electron spin at first?
PS: What a shame that all the Geiger counters are outside my budget... TBH, the only use I'd have for them is my small americium sample from a smoke detector.
I'm guessing they are styrofoam balls and painted with phosphorescent paint.
I bought my geiger counter back in 2010 on Ebay. It is a CDV-700 model made in the 60s. Back then, people were trying to get rid of them. I bought it for 35$. Since the Fukushima disaster, the prices on them went up to 120$ and more.
Everyone started to sell potassium iodide (KI) pills and the price of raw potassium iodide trippled.
Fortunately, I had also bought 1 kg of KI.
@@louistournas120 geiger couner
@@suresh-pt4cv
?
I would take a look at eBay. There’s a guy selling premade ready to go counters including an SBT10a tube!!! $100 from Lithuania
I know that isn’t cheap… But that tube is capable of alpha beta and gamma… and the tube could have cost just as much as the entire set up a few years ago!
And the counter he sells is just as capable as the radiascan 701A. In my opinion.
I know $100 is still a lot… But he has counters starting at $27! And you can always add a nicer tube when you can afford it. His are the only ones I found that are easily adjustable so that you can use different tubes. Each tube requires different voltages and his has built in quick and efficient adjustment.
If you like building electronics kits and are quite handy… The GKB5 kit is great! Also the GK-plus is wonderful. The gentleman who sells them is the original designer. His designs have been cloned and copied from China, Lithuania, and all over the world. You can find him at
Amazing!
That pitchblende rock is scary to me in a way I can't quantify. Thinking of all the potential accidents associated with keeping that in your home.
It's really not that big of a deal if you don't sleep on it. If it was, he wouldn't be allowed to have it in the first place.
Marie Sklodowska Curie was so hardcore.💙
@@joshroolf1966saying that she kept a glowing pile of radium on her desk
Your first Geiger counter can detect alpha radiation when you will take back cover off
Best advertisement ever. 👍👍👍
Those atoms look like neon cheeseballs.
That’s one cool model of Chernobyl, great video! Maybe you should visit the ISS so you can test all your radiation meters in space
I would love to visit the ISS... I would have to train for it first though x) Thanks for watching!
@Brainiac75 Space adventures company, along with SpaceX will make it happen
For strong samples, in my opinion it’s a good idea to have a saturation indicator on the Geiger counter. I’ve had several PET scans done (injected each time with ~12 mCi of F-18 FDG), and for several hours afterward, I can drive my Inspector+ (which has a 2-inch pancake tube) into saturation, by holding it near my body.
I that background music from a certain Off-brand Harry Pottwr game at 8:20
When you change the battery, make sure you have the device "on life support" with another power source to hold any volatile memory. Manufactures do this so that if you replace the cell, the unit will stop working. Also, Is there a Dallas chip on the board? Those have batteries to back their circuits potted into the bottom of them. Don't let the power fall out completely!
Great video!