Been done. Look up radioactive boyscout. Kid got himself and his parents in trouble for his pursuit of scientific experimentation. Built a reactor in the backyard shed and when he realized it was running away he dismantled it, shielded all the materials and was loading it into his car to dispose of when someone thought it would be funny to call in a bomb threat on him and police overreacted to an already dismantled reactor. He later joined the Navy and was forbidden from going near the reactor which sucks because he was kinda born for that sorta thing.
This is the type of Man that was my Physics teacher in the 80's, enthusiastic and loved trying to blow the science room up or blind us all with lasers. We need more people like this educating our Children.
I would’ve done anything for a teacher like him. I love the contagious feeling of wanting to learn. The joy I get from listening to them geeking out about what they’re passionate about is a feeling I can’t find anywhere else
@@l-l I was lucky, our Physics teacher tried to blind us, irradiate us, nearly get arrested by MPs for a radar jamming device one of our classmates designed and our Chemistry teacher tried to blow us up, burn us with acid, fill the room with poison gas and fill the floor with mercury (the room was closed down and did not open for the four years I remained there). I was put on detention for nearly setting fire to my classmate, he told me 'Only he was allowed to kill us, and that I was not insured to do so'. Professional educators that really inspired us with exciting, sometimes harmful tasks for the benefit of leaning or knowing there are real dangers in class/life, real life lessons.
Hi. maths teacher here. Its the curriculum that holds most of us back, particularly science teachers. Yes some are boring, some are fun but I also need someone that cover enough content such that my child can eventually pass exams and go on to A levels and beyond. A lot of newer teachers only see that side of things and not the whole ‘I should be trying to inspire kids’. There’s a fair chance that this fella would struggle in a class of 32 where 20 of them have no interest and mess about accordingly. 50-60% of what we do nowadays is behaviour management, seating plans, admin, reports, managing detentions etc etc. I always find it sad how quickly people speak negatively of my profession without ever done the job themselves or considering a variety of elements.
So if my math is correct, assuming 1mA at 110 mV, it should produce 9.504 Joules of energy over 24 hours. For a red LED operating at a F.V. of 2V with a current draw of 20 mA, the energy if stored with no losses or leakage would be enough to keep it lit for 237.6 seconds or ~4 minutes. This could prove to be extremely useful for supplying enough power to actuate some relays (or beefy transistors) and wake up hibernating electronics in applications where they’ll remain turned off for extended periods of time. 4 of these nuclear batteries could maintain a 1000mAh NiMH battery at 80% state of charge for 156 years. Or maybe you could create an atomic clock utilising the time-averaged regularity of the decays.
@@philip5940 So I deleted my previous comment because I misunderstood you, apologies. I was merely making a calculation for Rob’s little transistor based device. I think the real breakthrough is probably that Diamond doesn’t break down like the semiconductors we use in electronics do when exposed to radiation. Spacecraft have had reduced operating lifetimes in space due to radiation spikes (such as from CMEs, for instance) damaging the solar panels thereby decreasing their output. I’m not sure how the power output differs between Rob’s little experiment and the Chinese company’s product but the lifetime is what really matters (I think). Anyway, thanks for sharing!
I checked your numbers, seems right to me, and it's a good use of variables many may overlook or think they will never need beyond Ohm's Law. I checked using this equation to start with: voltage = joules of energy / coulomb of charge
A nuclear battery, etc, of low power can be assisted by a capacitor for when a relatively large amount of power is needed, say a transistor radio or a LED lamp to function when needed.
No, it can't. What you can do is use it to charge a conventional battery during "off-time", for devices that require power only intermittently. And yes, I said "battery" and not "capacitor", because capacitors can only store relatively small amounts of energy. However, a far more efficient way to achieve this is by using a bog standard charger if you live in a first world country and have access to mains voltage Or a dynamo built into the device, like with some torches or radios, if access to mains voltage is problematic (no infrastructure, or during a power outage). Or use solar panels if it's a device in a remote location where you don't have mains and winding the dynamo is impractical. E.g. a LoRa node monitoring some environmental parameters in a remote location in a forest, or what have you. I get it, these batteries are cool. But they're not a solution to every problem that has "power" in the title. There's a place for these things for sure, but powering devices that require more power than they can deliver is not it.
@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 a problem with most types of capacitor is self discharge or leakage current, they drain pretty quickly when sitting unused. It is highly likely that the self discharge rate of most, if not all capacitors is above the power output of one of these nuclear batteries.
This part of opening smoke sensors for its nuclear source remembers me a kid years ago that caused a nuclear accident while attempting to build his own home-made miniature nuclear reactor for his college science fair.
I watch a lot of science videos along with a science background but Robert MS seems to be the science teacher I never had. To be fair I have a lot of trouble keeping up with his latest project. This one was a mash of all I know about pn junctions and semiconducters together with nuclear physics. I am in awe.
This is such a cool video. Love the extra detail on the history of the battery as well as the practical demonstration. Look forward to the next one!!!
4 месяца назад+88
Its like seeing every experiment from my scientific books brought to life. Always amazed how fast you knock out these videos while still being quality. nuke battery was something i made after reading about the radioactive boy scout which eventually lead to making B.E.A.M robots, fm transmitters, rc airplanes, cnc devices...list goes on.
Nice demonstration. In 1960s, our military developed a portable nuclear plant that operates years providing a local power plant anywhere. There's a military documentary on yt showing this. And just in recent news this concept is being revisited. Thanks for sharing and providing good inspiration.
Many small scale nuclear things were tried including nuclear powered cars (Ford Nucleon). At the time it was envisioned that small scale reactors could also be a home power source. These days with battery energy storage this is truly feasible, but the nuclear dream died long ago.
It got scrapped because the fuel rods would build steam if removed improperly and one of the techs wasnt paying attention when removing it and got pinned to the roof by the rod
Idk how to explain the dopamine rush i felt when it all clicked how it worked. Incredibly clever engineering, and i applaud you for taking a stab at one in your garage. Thank you, im subscribed now
I just wanted to say I love your energy and your way of explaining. I got the idea of how this works now with little pre knowledge which makes you an excellent teacher
This was wonderful :) Educational, entertaining and your joy mirrored mine :) I love seeing people enjoy doing what they do and I thank you for the informative content :)
One comment. Half-life refers to the halving of the fissile material. This means that after 400+ years you'll get half the current but the battery will continue for hundreds of years more.
Fascinating! I wonder why this couldn't be scaled up to power larger items? I also have to wonder if the research and development of cheap, safe energy production and storage isn't restricted by the desire for "planned obsolescence". Companies aren't interested in spending the time and money to develop a power source you only need to by once a century. Looks like it's up to you Robert! 😜
well this is going very fast for what this is. 2018 till 2024 is only 6 years and we defenitly need to know excatly how pure and perfect we can make these batteries as their first use case is powering bios batteries keeping system times things like that
they can be scaled up but you wouldn't be able to power anything like a vehicle with them, they would be best suited for stuff like smart phones, smart watches and small electronic gadgets that don't draw massive amounts of power. i've commented on another tech channel trash talking the nano diamond battery when it first came out as they were poking fun at how little energy it produced... my response was that you'd stack them to get the voltage you need and that's your battery for the device for what would quite literally be a few lifetimes, you could take the battery out of a dead device and put it into a new one and reduce tech waste a significant amount.
A powerful enough version would likely need a low half life isotope, in order to emmit a ton of particles in a short enough time to make a meaningful current without weighing a ton itself, anyway, refueling yoir car each 5 years beats once a week by a factor of 54. Beta and Alpha particles are safe, an aluminium foil can block them with ease, and if you can't afford a piece of your hat, you can always stay atarround 2 meters of the source to be safe.
Thanks Robert. There is also some low energy Gamma radiation from the decay of Americium-241, so it's worth remembering. The smoke detector works by generating a voltage between two plates at each side of an air cavity. Smoke particles enter the cavity and disrupt (absorb) the Alpha particles, causing a drop in voltage, and triggering the alarm. So the detector is also essentially a low power battery.
I haven't used smoke detectors in years but don't they require normal batteries too? I'd image they're for the speaker that makes the sound, as the nuclear battery (more exactly some circuit component that works on it's own for years and triggers a signal in case of particles in the air) has not enough power. Wouldn't it be possible to use the radioactive sensor to charge a small normal battery while the speaker isn't used? I mean like a buffer, cause the sensor can't deliver enough throughput to 1:1 power the speaker.
@@user-up1id5rv2m indeed. You'd imagine you could charge a capacitor with the americium that could power the buzzer for 10 minutes or so. Assuming it had sufficient hours to charge before needing to go off.
This is amazing. Thank you for showing this. I've taken apart a couple metal detectors to give my new Geiger counter. (Wearing proper ppe of course) and not sure what else I could do with the buttons other than leave them in a jar in my garage for the next 400 some years but this solves my issue I made for myself!
Awesome video!...made my day. Can we increase the voltage out put in the two ways? 1) make a hole above the N and not cut off the top when aiming the Nuclear material at it, which would allow the alpha particles to be concentrated and the ones who are not going straight down would bounce around in the can and eventually hit the the N. 2) Would sorting the two Ns together increase the voltage. Also this may make a great mil volt reference standard.
And to think I had hundreds of 2N3055s once, another opportunity missed. How would a darlington transistor fare with the two base junctions effectively in series? Would a plastic bodied transistor be a better choice?
If this gets cheap enough for consumer products, one of the first applications I thought of was for smoke detectors, some of which use a radioactivity source (an isotope of Americium, I believe) to detect smoke. Perhaps they could use the same radiation source to power AND operate a smoke detector?
Add a supercapacitor, charged by the source. By the time the alarm is needed, it will have stored enough charge to provide the power required for the alarm.
@@tcmtech7515 Sure, at the moment, but if you consider that a computer as powerful as your phone is would cost $100,000,000 thirty years ago (and draw tens of kilowatts to operate) it’s a fairly safe assumption that not too long from now this nascent technology will become affordable.
Very Cool. For all those that want a long term battery, I would like to point out there are 50 year batteries on you tube. If size is not an issue, basically, just take large chunks of any two metals, aluminum and copper for example and stick them in a bucket with water and salt, and you have a battery. If you connect several cells, you will get higher voltage. In order to make it last long, like 50 years, one uses large chunks of copper -copper piping- and large chunks of aluminum tube or pipe. I built my own battery that powered an LED 24 hours a day with some aluminum foil and copper wire. After three months, the foil was starting to dissolve, and I had my fun.
I'm sure betavoltaics and other nuclear batteries hit the news every year now. Usually it's some article claiming you'll be able to power an EV with a stack of them, then followed by some "Busted" video showing how this isn't even remotely feasible. I think my favourite was Nurdrage taking the low-efficiency approach of sandwiching a bunch of tritium-filled phosphor-coated vials between two solar panels and getting a few microwatts. Would be kind of fun to see how many americium pellets and transistor cores it would take to do something simple like drive a wristwatch or a calculator though, if it can be done without significant risk. Even alpha and beta emitters can be dangerous if you swallow or breath them!
If you are willing to carry a phone that is the size of an early 1990s handphone,,, you definately can make a nuclear powered handphone. Phone, exercise weight and self defense instrument all in one.
@@nickl5658Honestly that doesn’t bother me at all the size, as long as it never dies I could also just use the battery as a battery charger as well which would be amazing.
Wow, this will actualy change the things and move the technology to next level. I am really exited to see the 1W version. Even slowly filling supercaps would solve the high power peak issues.
I love it! This is the most expensive power source in the world at almost $100 000 per W. Compared to solar, which is currently at $0.1 per W, the price would need to drop a million times. The first solar panels cost about $115.3 per watt, the price dropped 1000 times in fifty years.
I saw the product announcement yesterday and hoped you'd review your battery. Thanks. Wouldn't ɑ/ɓ radiant voltaic battery continue to produce electricity after its half-life, but at a reduced rate? Only half of the mass would have decayed into its new stable element -- the rest would still be active? WOuld love to see this or a karpen cell as a charger for the fractal capacitor array. One cell per capacitor.
Yust look at the voyager probes. They passive energy source decayed more and more over the decades and now only a few of the instruments have enough power to stay online. Theoretically it's never out of energy but practically it all depends on the half life.
Got a new subscriber! Awesome video! Very exciting news with these new batteries! Love the content and explanation! You remind me of what the “nuclear boys scout” must be all grown up haha
Philip Brody already found this out. By having a lead-lantheum matrix, encasing a radioactive element (Which we'll use radium as an example), you'll be able to effectively cause an ionization event giving a DC output. Depending on the purity of the lead-lantheum, it can go up to ~1500 volts/cm with a 30 nano-amp flow. See Patent US 4,041,465
I was watching your backlog of members videos on hemp batteries, and it got me thinking about all of the ashes I've accumulated from my wood burning fire. I know you can add water to ashes to make lye.. since I have such an excess of ashes to be used, is there any way I can use them in making a battery? Maybe as the anode? I love your videos and would love to hear your ideas on this idea, even if it's just a simple "no, that wouldn't be worth it."
@@LittleXtracaustic soda you get hydrogen, so many fun times had as a kid .. hydrogen balloons , and a wick.. well you can take it from here....🤔😂😎🇦🇺👌
@@LittleXtra I figured it could be put to use somehow. What anode and cathode would you recommend to use for a battery using a Sodium Hydroxide electrolyte?
The current Betavolt does 100 MICRO watts, not milliwatts as you stated in the beginning of the video.(yes, you stated it correctly later but just in case someone doesn't watch that far maybe they'll read this and know the truth)
sounds about right, but they're still talking about prototypes (edit: video says they are in pilot production, so i guess they are already making them) and they say they are stackable in layers and very thin so they could probably make a stack of 1000 and wire them in parallel or series, if they want to increase the current or voltage
5:07 also the plutonium battery in “The Martian” that kept Matt Damon toasty warm until he crossed Mars. Great Content Roberto! You never cease to amaze and astound. Cheers!
I got very excited when I saw the title but after watching the full video I realised is a edit of the old that for some reason got deleted in the last 24h, which made this video feal a bit like clickbait. Also by using the same footage you did not address the one important question from the comments. Can the mv reading you got from the apparatus be because of light contamination ( as the test is not done under complete absence of light) There are some research papers on building alpha voltaic cells online, the most promising one I could find is using Zirconium anode, Iridium cathode and is using liquid Galium as conversion medium. . The open-circuit potential of the cell is expected to be 1.62 V and is expected to deliver a current between 7 and 12 ma. (the full name is :Alpha-Voltaic Sources Using Liquid Ga as Conversion Medium)
This kind of voltage/ current would be useful for offsetting parasitic drains on circuits where there is always something that slowly depletes a battery even when you are not using it
Very interesting. It didn't occur to me until now that alpha radiations, being near the UV wavelengths, could cause photovoltaic cells or semiconductors to generate a voltage. I guess the same is true of x-rays too since they're the next step up from UV. Not that I know of any material which puts out x-rays while decaying. With the Americium, it looks like quite a few pieces would be needed in series to get 3.3V. I suppose each pellet could produce twice the output if it's extracted from its casing, to expose the underside and to sandwich ir between two transistors. My smoke detector with Americium is definitely putting out Beta radiations too as I get an increase of over 500 CPMs when pointing my Geiger counter towards the plastic case and Alpha radiation wouldn't make it through the plastic and thin metal cage surrounding the ionization chamber. I don't think it puts out Gamma though because the readings drop when I insert a 1mm steel plate between the smoke detector and the Geiger counter. It's still bad though if it can ionize floating dust which might end up being inhaled.
That could be a concern , but I remember another vid where a person went into a mine and the air was very radioactive from all the uranium decay. I could be misrepresenting but the main issue was the charged particle radiation attracting and sticking to the clothing which came out pretty radioactive, however it decayed quickly and putting the clothes into a bag away from the camp overnight dropped the radiation to background levels, perhaps simply an airtight unit would suffice.
@@terrysobkowich2084 If you meant airtight batteries then yes, I'd expect them to be both airtight and shielded sufficiently to block beta radiations, as someone will inevitably end up carrying one in their pants pocket. If you meant airtight smoke detector, that wouldn't work of course as the smoke needs to get in 🙂
If this really works we could get consumers to pay to slowly move all the nuclear waste from it's expensive storage facilities into domestic landfill, via gadgets... That'd be great. :)
i am sure this is the intended outcome the academic community was aiming to achieve. what genius is lurking withing the halls of academic institutions.
Do they last longer or shorter if they are in use? Like you could hook up hundreds of them and power your house for 50 years? Or will they wear out too fast if you don't give them recharge time
The reason they produce such a low voltage is because the amount of power they produce is limited by the rate of decay of the radioactive source. No matter how much of the the energy the decay puts out, the rate of decay doesn't change. There's a finite amount of energy that can eventually be extracted, but no way to increase the rate at which the matter decays. Well, unless you're talking about fissile material reaching criticality, but then you're not dealing with a battery, but a reactor...or a bomb.
While it would work in principle, it would only work placed right next to a hot source. The threshold of background radiation needed to set this off would be immediately dangerous to a human being(I presume), but if that’s all that your goal is, I don’t see why you couldn’t give it a shot!
I did something like this 15 years back with an americium chip. Was proof of concept but I would likely have to wait a long time to power up a capacitor to get an led to light. Had more fun with the chip and 4000v spark gap tester. Basically a fine guitar string wound in a ladder across a metal plate with about 5-6mm gap. Variable capacitor to wind it up until the arcs start then wind back just until the sparks stop then wave the alpha emitter over near the guitar wires. tick, tick, tick :P
I honestly think we could power our world off of small atomic reactors. There is no need for oil. But imagine something that lasts ages and doesn't break - small profits.
@@adamstewarton no sure thats true, im thinking of things like phones and laptops though, most people tend to replace them long before the battery goes wonky. it'd be a gamechanger for cars though i suppose, but they could just do what the tech industry and many car manufacturers already do and engineer them to fail after so many years, as well as make them impossible to maintain without ten million specialized tools and put in software to make it harder to get off brand spare parts etc etc. There are always shady ways to maintain profits lol. I get your point though, its definitely an incentive for companies to want these things away from the market.
I'm not getting too excited Robert. I saw a vid on this yesterday and the one thing we all want is a battery to power our house for say ten thousand bucks (or at least lower our energy bill), but this isn't it and isn't going to be apparently. Perhaps I was expecting a panacea, but I wonder what it'll be used for or if it will take 10 or 20 years to find the perfect application.
for sure but you can step it up and use it to charge other things. you could even run a small motor with a differential to do .. something. you can also hook a couple up in series for more power
Just think of IoT devices that'll last a lifetime (sensors, LoRa, etc) Plus we live on an electric generator (Earth), we just need to "tap" into it (not for silly waste of energy as many westerners/ easterners do right now, but still)
good question, the answer is that we are going to dispose of the radioactive material within the devices long before the half life of the radioactive material, just as many people do now the radioactive material will end up in the landfills. the good news is that many more people will get cancer from the exposure, the medical industry will do well.
Because it is not powering the actual alarm, only triggering the alarm. You need a battery to power the alarm. And the failure point of these alarms is not the radiation source, it is the other parts (random electronics randomly end up going, or dust builds up inside of the radiation chamber, etc). And they are good for longer than 10 years on average, that is just when they recommend getting a new one.
@germanlopez9448 your comment isn't even coherent yet seems to imply conspiracy to poison everyone. I disagree, also the americium is perfectly safe in its containment capsule as americium produces primarily alpha particles which are easily stopped with the outer (dead) layer of skin or a piece of paper. So much work has gone into making it safe that no, smoke detector alpha emitters are not going to be a risk unless you intentionally break open the capsule and then decide to swallow the americium piece inside. Don't say "the answer is" unless you are willing to back up a claim with documentation and evidence.
Have you lost your mind the first thing you want to do when you grow up is stop being bothered by the stupid phone brainwashed and programmed by a plastic glowing box
Nuclear batteries have been contracted to the US military from an Oregon manufacturing firm long ago. They were used in those sky beam search light units.
*In theory,* a 1-watt continuous output battery that can run for 50 years would have a~438,000 amp-hours capacity. At 3 volts that's a ~ 1.3 MWH battery! 😋 However, in realistic terms, in order to use a set of such batteries to do anything large like power an average home or electric vehicle. Each application would need many thousands of them. Likely about 10,000 of them to power an average house like mine and about 70,000 to 100,000 to make an EV that could be driven like a normal vehicle. 🤡 Oh ya, and current pricing estimates put them at about $ $4500 - 5000 US dollars each if you buy in bulk! 😂
You don't use these batteries to run things directly, you use them to charge super capacitors which will charge traditional larger capacity batteries continuously for 50-100 years.
Calculating watts per dollar might be more accurate. I am very bad at electricity math, so giving that the price of electricity is 16 cents per kwh; In theory, can this method produce cheaper electricity?
I can see some use cases for this. Trickle charger for cars. When it becomes more dense and able to get around 2amps at 13-14v (around 26-28w) your car battery in a modern car that is currently abused by all of the new electronics would last 2x as long.
Thank you for all the work you do to give us this information it is because of you and your inspirational attitude that many people explore scientific principles beyond what they learned in school and because of that many people will advanced what we understand of science. Thank you to you the hack miss dial from the Internet and the king of random. You guys are amazing and you continue to further the world’s knowledge without restriction and without censorship, you guys are doing an amazing job and we appreciate all the work you do to inform us and give us new skills and abilities. Life is nothing but a learning experience and you make the best of it. Thank you very much for everything that you do you inspire everyone you come in contact with you guys are amazing.
i took out the americium from a detecter a few years ago, i put it on a shelf some where and now i am lammenting the fact that i've lost it, this seems like such an awesome project
not at all, because you need 25x the same radiation source and thats I guess more problematic, because you have 25x higher risk that something bad might happen. Maybe Im wrong.
Best video yet. Damn the gear driven fan motors for electricity!!! Grab the americium and semiconductor and it’s done!! Awesome!!! Would it also work if you wrapped the ionizing material with an array of diodes?
Radioactive materials are like anything else: Be smarter than what you are working with. Know what you are working with and it's potential hazards. How to properly handle it safely. Use common sense once you have all pertinent information. Then use it as you need to. Thanks Rob!
Наука
Next episode is how to diy a small thorium reactor to power your whole house.😊
Please!?
I’m in ….😊
I’d buy that for a dollar!!
Been done. Look up radioactive boyscout. Kid got himself and his parents in trouble for his pursuit of scientific experimentation. Built a reactor in the backyard shed and when he realized it was running away he dismantled it, shielded all the materials and was loading it into his car to dispose of when someone thought it would be funny to call in a bomb threat on him and police overreacted to an already dismantled reactor. He later joined the Navy and was forbidden from going near the reactor which sucks because he was kinda born for that sorta thing.
I want one!
This dude has the energy of that uncle you were always extremely excited to go see as a child.
I am that Uncle.
True
Lol
yes
Nowadays, these uncles usually get locked up😂
This is the type of Man that was my Physics teacher in the 80's, enthusiastic and loved trying to blow the science room up or blind us all with lasers. We need more people like this educating our Children.
Impossible with Gove's reforms, because believe me, these teachers are still in the classroom
Yup, had a teacher like that. We need some visuals too you know. Not just some soundwaves from your teach's mouth.
I would’ve done anything for a teacher like him. I love the contagious feeling of wanting to learn. The joy I get from listening to them geeking out about what they’re passionate about is a feeling I can’t find anywhere else
@@l-l I was lucky, our Physics teacher tried to blind us, irradiate us, nearly get arrested by MPs for a radar jamming device one of our classmates designed and our Chemistry teacher tried to blow us up, burn us with acid, fill the room with poison gas and fill the floor with mercury (the room was closed down and did not open for the four years I remained there). I was put on detention for nearly setting fire to my classmate, he told me 'Only he was allowed to kill us, and that I was not insured to do so'.
Professional educators that really inspired us with exciting, sometimes harmful tasks for the benefit of leaning or knowing there are real dangers in class/life, real life lessons.
Hi. maths teacher here. Its the curriculum that holds most of us back, particularly science teachers. Yes some are boring, some are fun but I also need someone that cover enough content such that my child can eventually pass exams and go on to A levels and beyond. A lot of newer teachers only see that side of things and not the whole ‘I should be trying to inspire kids’. There’s a fair chance that this fella would struggle in a class of 32 where 20 of them have no interest and mess about accordingly. 50-60% of what we do nowadays is behaviour management, seating plans, admin, reports, managing detentions etc etc. I always find it sad how quickly people speak negatively of my profession without ever done the job themselves or considering a variety of elements.
It's so exciting learning new ways go get onto watch-lists. Keep it coming!
So if my math is correct, assuming 1mA at 110 mV, it should produce 9.504 Joules of energy over 24 hours. For a red LED operating at a F.V. of 2V with a current draw of 20 mA, the energy if stored with no losses or leakage would be enough to keep it lit for 237.6 seconds or ~4 minutes. This could prove to be extremely useful for supplying enough power to actuate some relays (or beefy transistors) and wake up hibernating electronics in applications where they’ll remain turned off for extended periods of time. 4 of these nuclear batteries could maintain a 1000mAh NiMH battery at 80% state of charge for 156 years. Or maybe you could create an atomic clock utilising the time-averaged regularity of the decays.
So I'll just mention it's pointed out in a comment or two that the output is 100 microwatts instead of milliwatts. Rob states microwatts later .
@@philip5940 So I deleted my previous comment because I misunderstood you, apologies. I was merely making a calculation for Rob’s little transistor based device. I think the real breakthrough is probably that Diamond doesn’t break down like the semiconductors we use in electronics do when exposed to radiation. Spacecraft have had reduced operating lifetimes in space due to radiation spikes (such as from CMEs, for instance) damaging the solar panels thereby decreasing their output. I’m not sure how the power output differs between Rob’s little experiment and the Chinese company’s product but the lifetime is what really matters (I think). Anyway, thanks for sharing!
It doesn't look like that comment got relayed through
I checked your numbers, seems right to me, and it's a good use of variables many may overlook or think they will never need beyond Ohm's Law. I checked using this equation to start with:
voltage = joules of energy / coulomb of charge
@@e100vids2 Thank you
A nuclear battery, etc, of low power can be assisted by a capacitor for when a relatively large amount of power is needed, say a transistor radio or a LED lamp to function when needed.
joule thief
No, it can't. What you can do is use it to charge a conventional battery during "off-time", for devices that require power only intermittently. And yes, I said "battery" and not "capacitor", because capacitors can only store relatively small amounts of energy.
However, a far more efficient way to achieve this is by using a bog standard charger if you live in a first world country and have access to mains voltage Or a dynamo built into the device, like with some torches or radios, if access to mains voltage is problematic (no infrastructure, or during a power outage). Or use solar panels if it's a device in a remote location where you don't have mains and winding the dynamo is impractical. E.g. a LoRa node monitoring some environmental parameters in a remote location in a forest, or what have you.
I get it, these batteries are cool. But they're not a solution to every problem that has "power" in the title. There's a place for these things for sure, but powering devices that require more power than they can deliver is not it.
@@EvenTheDogAgrees I agree, but I'm in also agree with Robert basic concepts , I was hesitant to find practical or efficient use.
@@EvenTheDogAgreessupercapacitors can hold a decent amount of energy now, there are disposable vapes that use them instead of batteries.
@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 a problem with most types of capacitor is self discharge or leakage current, they drain pretty quickly when sitting unused. It is highly likely that the self discharge rate of most, if not all capacitors is above the power output of one of these nuclear batteries.
This part of opening smoke sensors for its nuclear source remembers me a kid years ago that caused a nuclear accident while attempting to build his own home-made miniature nuclear reactor for his college science fair.
Wrong it was an eagle scout project
To be fair, this feels a LOT less dangerous than a reactor XD
I watch a lot of science videos along with a science background but Robert MS seems to be the science teacher I never had.
To be fair I have a lot of trouble keeping up with his latest project. This one was a mash of all I know about pn junctions and semiconducters together with nuclear physics.
I am in awe.
This is such a cool video. Love the extra detail on the history of the battery as well as the practical demonstration. Look forward to the next one!!!
Its like seeing every experiment from my scientific books brought to life. Always amazed how fast you knock out these videos while still being quality. nuke battery was something i made after reading about the radioactive boy scout which eventually lead to making B.E.A.M robots, fm transmitters, rc airplanes, cnc devices...list goes on.
I mean sounds interesting is it a book?
@@erikmaguina1
BEAM robots...there's a blast from the past!
Nice demonstration. In 1960s, our military developed a portable nuclear plant that operates years providing a local power plant anywhere. There's a military documentary on yt showing this. And just in recent news this concept is being revisited.
Thanks for sharing and providing good inspiration.
Ah but that would make it difficult to take money off us for energy, no wonder this sort of thing is kept low key
Many small scale nuclear things were tried including nuclear powered cars (Ford Nucleon). At the time it was envisioned that small scale reactors could also be a home power source. These days with battery energy storage this is truly feasible, but the nuclear dream died long ago.
See also: nuclear powered submarines, and ships(mainly aircraft carriers).
naquadah generator?
It got scrapped because the fuel rods would build steam if removed improperly and one of the techs wasnt paying attention when removing it and got pinned to the roof by the rod
Sir , you are funny, brilliant, and supremely entertaining. Always interesting! Thank you.
Idk how to explain the dopamine rush i felt when it all clicked how it worked. Incredibly clever engineering, and i applaud you for taking a stab at one in your garage. Thank you, im subscribed now
I just wanted to say I love your energy and your way of explaining. I got the idea of how this works now with little pre knowledge which makes you an excellent teacher
You make all this so much fun, Robert!
This was wonderful :) Educational, entertaining and your joy mirrored mine :) I love seeing people enjoy doing what they do and I thank you for the informative content :)
One comment. Half-life refers to the halving of the fissile material. This means that after 400+ years you'll get half the current but the battery will continue for hundreds of years more.
Well, technically the battery will continue forever, it's just that the current will keep dropping as per the decay.
Fascinating! I wonder why this couldn't be scaled up to power larger items?
I also have to wonder if the research and development of cheap, safe energy production and storage isn't restricted by the desire for "planned obsolescence". Companies aren't interested in spending the time and money to develop a power source you only need to by once a century.
Looks like it's up to you Robert! 😜
well this is going very fast for what this is. 2018 till 2024 is only 6 years and we defenitly need to know excatly how pure and perfect we can make these batteries as their first use case is powering bios batteries keeping system times things like that
they can be scaled up but you wouldn't be able to power anything like a vehicle with them, they would be best suited for stuff like smart phones, smart watches and small electronic gadgets that don't draw massive amounts of power. i've commented on another tech channel trash talking the nano diamond battery when it first came out as they were poking fun at how little energy it produced... my response was that you'd stack them to get the voltage you need and that's your battery for the device for what would quite literally be a few lifetimes, you could take the battery out of a dead device and put it into a new one and reduce tech waste a significant amount.
A powerful enough version would likely need a low half life isotope, in order to emmit a ton of particles in a short enough time to make a meaningful current without weighing a ton itself, anyway, refueling yoir car each 5 years beats once a week by a factor of 54.
Beta and Alpha particles are safe, an aluminium foil can block them with ease, and if you can't afford a piece of your hat, you can always stay atarround 2 meters of the source to be safe.
@fluffy_unicorn859 apple products are garbage anyways so whatever gets people to stop using them i guess lol.
Even smart phones are well beyond the capability of this. Although the energy density is quite high the power density is very low.@@ToeCutter454
Thank you, Sir Anthony Hopkins, for this fascinating information.
Robert, I just want to say: Love you! Thank You for excellent content. You are the best!
That cackle at 10:00 is why I adore you...... You are my favorite mad, funny, lovable, not-at-all-evil scientist!
Also came here to comment about the "I knew this -should- work, but here it is working!" cackle. Love it
Thanks Robert. There is also some low energy Gamma radiation from the decay of Americium-241, so it's worth remembering. The smoke detector works by generating a voltage between two plates at each side of an air cavity. Smoke particles enter the cavity and disrupt (absorb) the Alpha particles, causing a drop in voltage, and triggering the alarm. So the detector is also essentially a low power battery.
I haven't used smoke detectors in years but don't they require normal batteries too?
I'd image they're for the speaker that makes the sound, as the nuclear battery (more exactly some circuit component that works on it's own for years and triggers a signal in case of particles in the air) has not enough power. Wouldn't it be possible to use the radioactive sensor to charge a small normal battery while the speaker isn't used? I mean like a buffer, cause the sensor can't deliver enough throughput to 1:1 power the speaker.
@@user-up1id5rv2m indeed. You'd imagine you could charge a capacitor with the americium that could power the buzzer for 10 minutes or so. Assuming it had sufficient hours to charge before needing to go off.
*Radioactive Boyscout Intensifies*
(Rip)
@@user-up1id5rv2mModern fire detectors are photo-electric (smoke particles deflect/absorb the photons) and don't use a radioactive source.
Great video Robert. The possibilities with this tech are endless and to think its been around for years.
This is amazing. Thank you for showing this. I've taken apart a couple metal detectors to give my new Geiger counter. (Wearing proper ppe of course) and not sure what else I could do with the buttons other than leave them in a jar in my garage for the next 400 some years but this solves my issue I made for myself!
Good to see you revisited your nuclear battery, one of my favs
Awesome video!...made my day. Can we increase the voltage out put in the two ways? 1) make a hole above the N and not cut off the top when aiming the Nuclear material at it, which would allow the alpha particles to be concentrated and the ones who are not going straight down would bounce around in the can and eventually hit the the N. 2) Would sorting the two Ns together increase the voltage.
Also this may make a great mil volt reference standard.
Great idea, it also keeps it sealed
I have really enjoyed. Highest grade of information, given simple, but deep enough to understand.
Great initiative, such enthusiasm will for sure propel the humanity towards energy independence. 👏
Wow ... this .. is why i love this channel
You sir, have made me mentally wealthy! The way you explain things is amazing! Now subbed and locked in!
Awesome demonstration Sir. I learned something new and appreciate you for it.
I don't know how the algo gods sent your channel to me... but I'm so glad... love your videos!
And to think I had hundreds of 2N3055s once, another opportunity missed. How would a darlington transistor fare with the two base junctions effectively in series? Would a plastic bodied transistor be a better choice?
If this gets cheap enough for consumer products, one of the first applications I thought of was for smoke detectors, some of which use a radioactivity source (an isotope of Americium, I believe) to detect smoke. Perhaps they could use the same radiation source to power AND operate a smoke detector?
I wrote my comment too soon. I had no idea you were going to use a smoke detector for your project!
The power density would be insufficient to operate any sort of audible alarm.
Add a supercapacitor, charged by the source. By the time the alarm is needed, it will have stored enough charge to provide the power required for the alarm.
Online estimates already say they will cost around $5000 each.
@@tcmtech7515 Sure, at the moment, but if you consider that a computer as powerful as your phone is would cost $100,000,000 thirty years ago (and draw tens of kilowatts to operate) it’s a fairly safe assumption that not too long from now this nascent technology will become affordable.
Should have rin a sweepstake on how many hours between the news breaking and your video coming out.
Another excellent explanation Mr. Murray.
Very Cool. For all those that want a long term battery, I would like to point out there are 50 year batteries on you tube. If size is not an issue, basically, just take large chunks of any two metals, aluminum and copper for example and stick them in a bucket with water and salt, and you have a battery. If you connect several cells, you will get higher voltage. In order to make it last long, like 50 years, one uses large chunks of copper -copper piping- and large chunks of aluminum tube or pipe. I built my own battery that powered an LED 24 hours a day with some aluminum foil and copper wire. After three months, the foil was starting to dissolve, and I had my fun.
I'm sure betavoltaics and other nuclear batteries hit the news every year now. Usually it's some article claiming you'll be able to power an EV with a stack of them, then followed by some "Busted" video showing how this isn't even remotely feasible. I think my favourite was Nurdrage taking the low-efficiency approach of sandwiching a bunch of tritium-filled phosphor-coated vials between two solar panels and getting a few microwatts.
Would be kind of fun to see how many americium pellets and transistor cores it would take to do something simple like drive a wristwatch or a calculator though, if it can be done without significant risk. Even alpha and beta emitters can be dangerous if you swallow or breath them!
If you are willing to carry a phone that is the size of an early 1990s handphone,,, you definately can make a nuclear powered handphone. Phone, exercise weight and self defense instrument all in one.
@@nickl5658Honestly that doesn’t bother me at all the size, as long as it never dies I could also just use the battery as a battery charger as well which would be amazing.
EEVblog 1595 - 50 Year Chinese Nuclear Diamond Battery!
So 1000 smoke detectors will get you a 12v power source that lasts over 400 years....hmm tempting
You then would have to worry about what to do with that 3rd nut...lol
Got to love RMS's videos! Love that coffee mug "in the lab"!
Thanks for a great demonstration and explanation!
Wow, this will actualy change the things and move the technology to next level. I am really exited to see the 1W version. Even slowly filling supercaps would solve the high power peak issues.
My thoughts exactly a bunch of these with a capacitor array would be amazing
China numba 1 huh?
It would be great to have something portable sized to charge battery packs on the go.
I love it! This is the most expensive power source in the world at almost $100 000 per W. Compared to solar, which is currently at $0.1 per W, the price would need to drop a million times. The first solar panels cost about $115.3 per watt, the price dropped 1000 times in fifty years.
One of the best randomly recommended youtube videos on my feed
Nice video Robert, I remember some of the radio types from A - Level physics class. Dead skin/paper sheet stopping alpha particles.
Very nice. I wonder if it would work better with a Solar cell
me too!
Actually it would. The power density is very low.@@ThinkingandTinkering
I saw the product announcement yesterday and hoped you'd review your battery. Thanks.
Wouldn't ɑ/ɓ radiant voltaic battery continue to produce electricity after its half-life, but at a reduced rate? Only half of the mass would have decayed into its new stable element -- the rest would still be active?
WOuld love to see this or a karpen cell as a charger for the fractal capacitor array. One cell per capacitor.
Yust look at the voyager probes.
They passive energy source decayed more and more over the decades and now only a few of the instruments have enough power to stay online.
Theoretically it's never out of energy but practically it all depends on the half life.
Got a new subscriber! Awesome video! Very exciting news with these new batteries! Love the content and explanation! You remind me of what the “nuclear boys scout” must be all grown up haha
Offspring with 2 heads, you say!! It seems like a risk worth taking😄😅Great video and very interesting!
Philip Brody already found this out. By having a lead-lantheum matrix, encasing a radioactive element (Which we'll use radium as an example), you'll be able to effectively cause an ionization event giving a DC output.
Depending on the purity of the lead-lantheum, it can go up to ~1500 volts/cm with a 30 nano-amp flow.
See Patent US 4,041,465
I was watching your backlog of members videos on hemp batteries, and it got me thinking about all of the ashes I've accumulated from my wood burning fire. I know you can add water to ashes to make lye.. since I have such an excess of ashes to be used, is there any way I can use them in making a battery? Maybe as the anode? I love your videos and would love to hear your ideas on this idea, even if it's just a simple "no, that wouldn't be worth it."
Sodium Hydroxide is a wonderful electrolyte, just don't mix with aluminum, zinc, and a few other metals or bad things happen.
@@LittleXtracaustic soda you get hydrogen, so many fun times had as a kid .. hydrogen balloons , and a wick.. well you can take it from here....🤔😂😎🇦🇺👌
@@LittleXtra I figured it could be put to use somehow. What anode and cathode would you recommend to use for a battery using a Sodium Hydroxide electrolyte?
Thank you. Great home project to tinker with.
This is so interesting. Thanks for the upload, just subscribed.
The current Betavolt does 100 MICRO watts, not milliwatts as you stated in the beginning of the video.(yes, you stated it correctly later but just in case someone doesn't watch that far maybe they'll read this and know the truth)
So you think they'll skip the rest of the video and go right to your comment that's pretty narcissus of you
@@jasonlogan5765 hehe don't be that way. He's just trying to help. We are all learning and sharing here.
@jasonlogan5765 "narcissistic"*
sounds about right, but they're still talking about prototypes (edit: video says they are in pilot production, so i guess they are already making them) and they say they are stackable in layers and very thin so they could probably make a stack of 1000 and wire them in parallel or series, if they want to increase the current or voltage
I was wondering about that actually😂
5:07 also the plutonium battery in “The Martian” that kept Matt Damon toasty warm until he crossed Mars.
Great Content Roberto! You never cease to amaze and astound.
Cheers!
Glad to see you're still going strong, Robert!
You are the man! 🎉😂😂 please keep making videos! Wow what a great channel
I got very excited when I saw the title but after watching the full video I realised is a edit of the old that for some reason got deleted in the last 24h, which made this video feal a bit like clickbait.
Also by using the same footage you did not address the one important question from the comments.
Can the mv reading you got from the apparatus be because of light contamination
( as the test is not done under complete absence of light)
There are some research papers on building alpha voltaic cells online, the most promising one I could find is using Zirconium anode, Iridium cathode and is using liquid Galium as conversion medium. . The open-circuit potential of the cell is expected to be 1.62 V and is expected to deliver a current between 7 and 12 ma.
(the full name is :Alpha-Voltaic Sources Using Liquid Ga as Conversion Medium)
This kind of voltage/ current would be useful for offsetting parasitic drains on circuits where there is always something that slowly depletes a battery even when you are not using it
This guy is awesome, talks science in understandable English 👍
Very educative and informative, thanks.
Very interesting. It didn't occur to me until now that alpha radiations, being near the UV wavelengths, could cause photovoltaic cells or semiconductors to generate a voltage. I guess the same is true of x-rays too since they're the next step up from UV. Not that I know of any material which puts out x-rays while decaying.
With the Americium, it looks like quite a few pieces would be needed in series to get 3.3V. I suppose each pellet could produce twice the output if it's extracted from its casing, to expose the underside and to sandwich ir between two transistors.
My smoke detector with Americium is definitely putting out Beta radiations too as I get an increase of over 500 CPMs when pointing my Geiger counter towards the plastic case and Alpha radiation wouldn't make it through the plastic and thin metal cage surrounding the ionization chamber. I don't think it puts out Gamma though because the readings drop when I insert a 1mm steel plate between the smoke detector and the Geiger counter. It's still bad though if it can ionize floating dust which might end up being inhaled.
That could be a concern , but I remember another vid where a person went into a mine and the air was very radioactive from all the uranium decay. I could be misrepresenting but the main issue was the charged particle radiation attracting and sticking to the clothing which came out pretty radioactive, however it decayed quickly and putting the clothes into a bag away from the camp overnight dropped the radiation to background levels, perhaps simply an airtight unit would suffice.
@@terrysobkowich2084 If you meant airtight batteries then yes, I'd expect them to be both airtight and shielded sufficiently to block beta radiations, as someone will inevitably end up carrying one in their pants pocket.
If you meant airtight smoke detector, that wouldn't work of course as the smoke needs to get in 🙂
With fascinating but wacky stuff like this, Robert MS and Styropyro is the collab we need...
Dude your content is awesome! You seem like such a charming guy
Would this work better on a solar cell rather than single transistor?
Sabine Hossenfelder also covered this recently. She also has a great sense of humour.
This one is way more informative though
I never correctly remember her surname . But I'm not going editing my other recent commitment though.
oh, definitely @@paulperegud6000
This stuff is fascinating, thanks Robert
Great video, like always. 👍
If I remember correctly, Boeing has been making similar batteries for over a decade(s).
If this really works we could get consumers to pay to slowly move all the nuclear waste from it's expensive storage facilities into domestic landfill, via gadgets...
That'd be great.
:)
i am sure this is the intended outcome the academic community was aiming to achieve. what genius is lurking withing the halls of academic institutions.
Do they last longer or shorter if they are in use? Like you could hook up hundreds of them and power your house for 50 years? Or will they wear out too fast if you don't give them recharge time
The reason they produce such a low voltage is because the amount of power they produce is limited by the rate of decay of the radioactive source. No matter how much of the the energy the decay puts out, the rate of decay doesn't change. There's a finite amount of energy that can eventually be extracted, but no way to increase the rate at which the matter decays. Well, unless you're talking about fissile material reaching criticality, but then you're not dealing with a battery, but a reactor...or a bomb.
Nuclear batteries last the same length of time no matter if it is used or not.
Thank you for your videos, you are the cool uncle we all need.
Thank you much love and respect
Also a novel way of creating a radiation detector if you omit the source... just read the output with a multimeter.
While it would work in principle, it would only work placed right next to a hot source. The threshold of background radiation needed to set this off would be immediately dangerous to a human being(I presume), but if that’s all that your goal is, I don’t see why you couldn’t give it a shot!
I need millions of them...
I never saw one of your videos before but I’ve already subscribed
I did something like this 15 years back with an americium chip. Was proof of concept but I would likely have to wait a long time to power up a capacitor to get an led to light. Had more fun with the chip and 4000v spark gap tester. Basically a fine guitar string wound in a ladder across a metal plate with about 5-6mm gap. Variable capacitor to wind it up until the arcs start then wind back just until the sparks stop then wave the alpha emitter over near the guitar wires. tick, tick, tick :P
Can you make an alpha particle detector from that transistor?
I honestly think we could power our world off of small atomic reactors. There is no need for oil. But imagine something that lasts ages and doesn't break - small profits.
Well idk, its not usually the batteries that break first in most battery powered products, is it?
Energy companies are gonna be mad though lol.
@@svinkuk2652 they may not break first but surely they don't last ages.
@@adamstewarton no sure thats true, im thinking of things like phones and laptops though, most people tend to replace them long before the battery goes wonky.
it'd be a gamechanger for cars though i suppose, but they could just do what the tech industry and many car manufacturers already do and engineer them to fail after so many years, as well as make them impossible to maintain without ten million specialized tools and put in software to make it harder to get off brand spare parts etc etc.
There are always shady ways to maintain profits lol.
I get your point though, its definitely an incentive for companies to want these things away from the market.
No they are not. The power output of these things isn't even enough to run a very dim LED torch.@@svinkuk2652
Loving this random RUclips recommendation ❤
I love your lesson, you make me so interested, and want to learn more
I'm not getting too excited Robert. I saw a vid on this yesterday and the one thing we all want is a battery to power our house for say ten thousand bucks (or at least lower our energy bill), but this isn't it and isn't going to be apparently.
Perhaps I was expecting a panacea, but I wonder what it'll be used for or if it will take 10 or 20 years to find the perfect application.
you do right mate - It is fascinating but like all these things there are issues for sure
for sure but you can step it up and use it to charge other things. you could even run a small motor with a differential to do .. something. you can also hook a couple up in series for more power
Just think of IoT devices that'll last a lifetime (sensors, LoRa, etc)
Plus we live on an electric generator (Earth), we just need to "tap" into it (not for silly waste of energy as many westerners/ easterners do right now, but still)
If Americium 241 has a half life of 432 years, why is my smoke detector only good for 10 years?
good question, the answer is that we are going to dispose of the radioactive material within the devices long before the half life of the radioactive material, just as many people do now the radioactive material will end up in the landfills. the good news is that many more people will get cancer from the exposure, the medical industry will do well.
Because it is not powering the actual alarm, only triggering the alarm. You need a battery to power the alarm. And the failure point of these alarms is not the radiation source, it is the other parts (random electronics randomly end up going, or dust builds up inside of the radiation chamber, etc). And they are good for longer than 10 years on average, that is just when they recommend getting a new one.
Text it, if it works it works, if it does not, it’s probably the failure of components.
@germanlopez9448 your comment isn't even coherent yet seems to imply conspiracy to poison everyone. I disagree, also the americium is perfectly safe in its containment capsule as americium produces primarily alpha particles which are easily stopped with the outer (dead) layer of skin or a piece of paper. So much work has gone into making it safe that no, smoke detector alpha emitters are not going to be a risk unless you intentionally break open the capsule and then decide to swallow the americium piece inside.
Don't say "the answer is" unless you are willing to back up a claim with documentation and evidence.
Capacitors, especially the older electrolytic ones get leaky and make the system unreliable.
Ty for the experimentation. Super cool stuff
So it breaks down into a precious-to-me metal. 😊. Pretty cool dude.
If you use an electric photo cell, won't it produce higher voltage?
What about the receptor of an IR sensor?
The idea of a phone that doesn't need charging is very appealing.
it is indeed
Have you lost your mind the first thing you want to do when you grow up is stop being bothered by the stupid phone brainwashed and programmed by a plastic glowing box
All we need now is a 50-year phone...
Apple disagrees!
Nuclear batteries have been contracted to the US military from an Oregon manufacturing firm long ago. They were used in those sky beam search light units.
Very informative. Thank you
Scrounging through my old carbon reactor rods now...
*In theory,* a 1-watt continuous output battery that can run for 50 years would have a~438,000 amp-hours capacity. At 3 volts that's a ~ 1.3 MWH battery! 😋
However, in realistic terms, in order to use a set of such batteries to do anything large like power an average home or electric vehicle. Each application would need many thousands of them. Likely about 10,000 of them to power an average house like mine and about 70,000 to 100,000 to make an EV that could be driven like a normal vehicle. 🤡
Oh ya, and current pricing estimates put them at about $ $4500 - 5000 US dollars each if you buy in bulk! 😂
You don't use these batteries to run things directly, you use them to charge super capacitors which will charge traditional larger capacity batteries continuously for 50-100 years.
Calculating watts per dollar might be more accurate. I am very bad at electricity math, so giving that the price of electricity is 16 cents per kwh; In theory, can this method produce cheaper electricity?
@@lordofthechimie 1300 x .16 = $208
I can see some use cases for this.
Trickle charger for cars. When it becomes more dense and able to get around 2amps at 13-14v (around 26-28w) your car battery in a modern car that is currently abused by all of the new electronics would last 2x as long.
Thank you for all the work you do to give us this information it is because of you and your inspirational attitude that many people explore scientific principles beyond what they learned in school and because of that many people will advanced what we understand of science. Thank you to you the hack miss dial from the Internet and the king of random. You guys are amazing and you continue to further the world’s knowledge without restriction and without censorship, you guys are doing an amazing job and we appreciate all the work you do to inform us and give us new skills and abilities. Life is nothing but a learning experience and you make the best of it. Thank you very much for everything that you do you inspire everyone you come in contact with you guys are amazing.
Could a solar panel be used instead of a transistor?
interesting question - i may well try it
@@ThinkingandTinkering please, we would love to see !
And put more in series upto 5v 😊
Combine it with a joule thief to drive an led.
i took out the americium from a detecter a few years ago, i put it on a shelf some where and now i am lammenting the fact that i've lost it, this seems like such an awesome project
Cheers from San Diego California!
xbox controller drained one of these batteries in two weeks
If i were to mount 25 2n3055 blocks in series will it increase voltage with the same radiation?
not at all, because you need 25x the same radiation source and thats I guess more problematic, because you have 25x higher risk that something bad might happen. Maybe Im wrong.
@@prte100 as in 25 smoke alarms from the same manufactory?
@@eco_logic i don't know what was originally meant, but I suppose that
Best video yet. Damn the gear driven fan motors for electricity!!! Grab the americium and semiconductor and it’s done!! Awesome!!!
Would it also work if you wrapped the ionizing material with an array of diodes?
Radioactive materials are like anything else: Be smarter than what you are working with. Know what you are working with and it's potential hazards. How to properly handle it safely. Use common sense once you have all pertinent information. Then use it as you need to. Thanks Rob!
When you said 10 times and slid I was like I had to rewind and watch that again that was smooth