Radioactive "health" pen from eBay.
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- Опубликовано: 22 мар 2020
- There's a certain irony when something is being sold as a way to protect yourself from harmful mobile phone radiation, when the device itself emits much more harmful radiation.
After seeing The Thought Emporium's excellent exposé of the myriad of horrific pendants and bangles that contained radioactive material, I immediately rushed to eBay to buy one of the pens before they were banned.
It turns out I didn't need to rush. They're still there if you search for the magic keywords "nano wand". Here's a link, but seriously... Look, but don't buy.
www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from...
The pens are filled with what appears to be thorium dioxide which is not something you want to breathe in or ingest. If you have a geiger counter and like radioactive stuff then by all means get one as a novelty, but store it somewhere safe and mark it clearly as radioactive. Guide cost is around $15.
In a way the metal body of the pen and usage makes it a lot safer than the horrible pendants and bangles made of thorium powder loaded plastic. Those items are being worn directly against the skin and could pose a long term health risk.
Here's a link to the video by The Thought Emporium:-
• Negative Ion/Anti-5g P...
Given the apathy eBay has had to electrically dangerous stuff being shipped directly from China, I'd guess that these items will be available on an ongoing basis with new listings popping up when old ones are taken down. That's how it seems to work these days.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of RUclips's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. 
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it cures the lack of cancer.
Similarly, it lacks the cure of cancer
Perfect for those Darwin Defiers who want to win a Darwin Award all their own.
@@KiraSlith Perfect for anti vaxxer, flattards, and MMS morons.
@@DrakkarCalethiel more like pro-vax murderers, globeheads, and other cultists in big pharma
Ya boi Chilli You mean to tell me there are enough of you flat earth believers to have stumbled upon that comment so quickly?
It's a scary globe we live on today...
"Let's turn off the Geiger counter, so it stops beeping so much" ~ BigClive, 2020.
And that pesky fire alarm too.
I had to turn off my carbon monoxide alarm, the beeping was making my head hurt.
@@texmex01 haha
He didn't even hit to see if that would remedy the 'problem' pfff amateurs :P
I had to take the batteries out of my carbon monoxide detector. Damn thing wouldn't stop beeping giving me a headache. I'm gonna go take a nap now and sleep it off.
"That's just the Gamma", least reassuring reassurance ever.
Don't worry. Glass jar.
guess he's gonna turn green in a cuple weeks huh
Funny thing is, the gamma is more likely to go through you instead of being absorbed by you. Beta is the most damaging unless you injest the source. Then the alpha will get you so much more than it otherwise would.
"Radioactive urethral sound" are not words I wanted to hear today. ... or any day. ... ever.
*shudder*
Wheres your sense of adventure?
How many MDs at the emergency hear something like: I was running around and fell on it?
It was such an unexpected statement I couldn't help but laugh with a face of "oh gawd no!".
Oh dear me
10:30 if anyone is wondering
"I suppose you could use it as a radioactive urethral sound, up the end of your willy" - Big Clive, 2020
10:31 the line is said
Something tells me this video is demonetized…
If you did stick it up the end of you willy, would the gamma rays turn you into the incredible hulk??
@@happlesswoodworker6903 The incredible junk.
Mike Foster The Incredible Dick. 😁
Sh!t, I can remember playing with gas mantels as a kid in my grandad’s shed. Ah well I also remember smashing up asbestos so maybe they will cancel each other out......
I'm not a doctor.
But that's totally how that works.
" maybe they will cancer each other out" sounds better., You will be fine, I guess we all did things as kids that were far from healthy. still remember doing loads of electrolysis with stainless steel and salt water. Hexavalent chromium and chlorine, lovely combination! :D
@Jason Watkins The insulators are made from alumina for decades now. The only dangerous is the under 1% chromium.
Only the oldest ones contain beryllium.
F
What is a mantle?
"Negative ions", by which we mean "contains a source of ionising radiation".
ironically enough, alpha particles are positively charged
I guess it does emit some beta particles, but still
@@1224chrisng beta particles are electrons flying at high speeds, right? That’d make sense because alpha particles are flying nuclei, so the electrons have to go somewhere.
"O.M.G. Trish! You have such a healthy glow"
I don't get the joke. For now, I'll assume it's about a man who stuck a thorium rod somewhere unfortunate, (as in, up his willy) and became a woman ("Trish") as a result.
@@deltab9768 I'm just trying to imagine the typical conversation in your average tsjernobyl beauty salon
@@-a6833 Just a Half teaspoon in your Shake of choice And Have the Energy ... The Joke can go Anywhere 😎
@@bansheemania1692 Not great not terrible
*happy feral ghoul noises*
I always wondered how China disposes of its nuclear waste.
It's far more civilised to invade the middle east and use our tanks to dispose of our depleted uranium stocks.
The US dumped millions of tons of deleted uranium in the middle east as bullets.
@@wetlettuce4768 well fuck me honestly, the first guy ive seen put it that way, well done.
"The solution to pollution is dilution."
They sell it to North Korea
“It’s highly radioactive”, says Clive whilst happily handling a bag full of it!
Luckily radioactivity can be handled for a while. It is generally only dangerous either if you consume it or are in long contact with it.
@@MrPbhuh Nonetheless, I still worry about Clives safety sometimes 😂
@@bmrapple Don't worry. We can't see it in his videos but he is wearing his safety t-shirt.
Tomi Tuominen More like cancer superpowers...
Most of the radioactive radiation from thorium oxide won't penetrate the skin and is pretty much harmless unless digested apart from the little amount of gamma particles. Still, if you consider that all it takes to get cancer is a single particle destroying just the right molecule inside a cell, even in these small quantities it can't be truly considered harmless. Though the chance of getting cancer from handling this pen for a little bit, though not zero, is only increasing the chance of getting cancer by a negligible amount. We all get hit by a lot more particles from nature over our lives as it is, the chance basically grows only from an already astronomically low chance of developing cancer to an ever so slightly less astronomically chance of developing cancer.
I'm sure in 1985 you can find plutonium at every corner drugstore!
You just needed to ask and be a regular customer, then you get access to the good stuff they keep under the counter. ;-)
I'm in Boulder, Colorado and we do have plutonium in our sewers because some moron at NIST decided to pour it down the drain.
No.... In School Science experiment kits from the 40&50's and old peoples yard & estate sales.... I still find DDT and Mercury... Most of the kits I used to find were radioactive but not in any dangerous level... I love the old rocket kits.... I used to collect those...
Great Scott!
Heavy.
I’m kind of disappointed it doesn’t also vibrate to aid in the “massaging” people would use a shape like that for
m.ruclips.net/video/krWokaLJUug/видео.html
you could get some of the phone micro motors and a e-cig battery and make one. they have some very small motors for sale.
Vibrating jumbo ones exist horrifyingly enough :/
Sure they do. But the real question is, are they noooklierrrrrr?
I'm usually the first to say to not unreasonably freak out about radiation, especially with household items like Fiestaware and Uranium glass since those are fairly safe with minimum precautions (even Radium clocks are fine to have minding to keep them away and not to mess with them).
This however is one of the worst objects one can get, not because of the amount of radiation per se (as said Thorium is everywhere and it's not an issue normally) but because of the fact that it's in powder form. Internal contamination is a completely different beast and very very dangerous.
So yeah I would recommend anyone to not mess with the powder unless absolutely prepared to do so.
True... Breathing in alpha particles is very bad as they come way to close to your cells
according to the NRC here in he US dose is dose be it internal or external. Now that sounds weird but in fact its true. There are weighting factors and such to take in to account the ability of each radiation to ionize and where that radionclide goes in the body. We even have a way to equate airborne radioactive particles being inhaled to an external gamma dose. The unit is called DAC or derived air concentration. 1 DAC/Hour is equal to 2.5mrem (25uSv) of gamma dose exposure per hour you are in the environment. And there are different values of activity per milliliter that determine the dac value of the air. Now the Dac Value for alpha emitters is pretty small so even just a tiny amount of inhalation of alpha emitting dust causes a large amount of equivalent dose. The DAC value itself is based off how much air the average human breathes in 2000 hours (1 working year) and how much concentration of a specific isotope will cause that individual to receive their annual limit of intake.
An alpha source in powder form is pretty much the nastiest shit to breathe in.
@@josephvanas6352 Interestingly during the Manhattan project the dose limit on ingesting/inhaled Radium was really really low, probably for that reason.
@@Weaponsandstuff93 yeah, the DAC value for alpha (Pu-239) is something like 3E-12 uCi/mL of air as per the NRC which is a tiny tiny amount of actual contaminant. I have heard stories of people working in 15-20 million DAC environments with respiratory protection of course. But at that point if it fails you will get a pretty good uptake.
Something to note about those thorium mantles, they emit a surprising amount of radon gas as they decay. The gas won't expand or pressurise but will fill whatever container the mantles are stored in. It's recommended mantles are stored in sealed containers and should only be opened outside in an open area away from others.
Shortly after we moved into our house there was somewhat of a tizzy over radon, the state was giving away detectors for free. You leave it in your basement for a couple of weeks then mail it in for analysis. Best I could get was an "inconclusive" result. So maybe I'm okay, maybe not.
Those keywords just ooze trust and hope for humanity as a whole.
What do you mean? It's just a typical everyday ZPE Quantum Value Nano Wand Zero Point Energy Pen PU Pouch 2200+ Healing Power? Everyone has one these days.
"For this next test, we put nanoparticles in the gel. In layman's terms, that's a billion little gizmos that are going to travel into your bloodstream and pump experimental genes and RNA molecules and so forth into your tumors. Now, maybe you don't have any tumors. Well, don't worry. If you sat on a folding chair in the lobby and weren't wearing lead underpants, we took care of that too."
- Cave Johnson
Aperture Laboratories would be one of the most terrifying places to work because you are always, whether you know it or not, 'participating' in multiple tests at once.
@@jacksonpercy8044 this shit boggles my mind.
And when life gives you lemons you should give the lemons back
i like how we've gone back to the days of "Radiation will cure everything!"
I just Comment the same Thing...1920s this stuff was All Over..100yrs later and Same chemical Different object
The same morons that use products like this are scared of radiation treatment for cancer.
And we already sort of repeated the previous era--the "electricity will cure everything" era. My history's pretty spotty--what's the next quackery on the schedule?
@@rdizzy1 and probably ‘5G death beams’ too
We're entering a time now where cannabis is having similar claims made about it. It's a magic cure-all. Of course it isn't, but if you're going to obsess about a magic health product I'd say we're still better off with it being cannabis than radiation.
Would you prefer an effective anti-inflammatory with a nice buzz, or cancer? Hmm. Tough choice.
" That's just the gamma escaping "
Top 10 least reassuring things ever heard.
It's actually 100% assuring because there is no gamma radiation in the thorium decay cascade.
@@mojoblues66 - sure,that is what our science says- but our COMIC BOOKS say that will turn us into monsters with super powers so....
Zero-point energy pens. They've found them in a crate on Atlantis.
Can't wait for a poor Chinese translation to say "Pointless Energy Pen"
I heard Carter used one of these pens in her spare time to "cure" things.
If they had zero-point energy, they are centuries ahead of us. Harness energy from vacuum!
@@NothingXemnas millennia ahead it was a TV show Starfate Atlantis.
Mind you they obviously weren't that sophisticated their ZPMs were much bigger than a pen lol
#unexpectedstargate
We live in a timeline where people are wearing radioactive necklaces, poking each other with radioactive pens, and Spring Breaking themselves into a giant plague party. Clearly, it is humanity's fate to die of stupidity.
only the stupid will die, and the meek (who never were going to go outside, plague or not) shall inherit the earth.
Meh. At least we're not paying girls to put radium in their mouths.
Stay at home orders are the exact same sort of quackery as this pen. Epidemiologists are pretty divided whether they work at all, and many have recommended focusing on other mitigation measures. It is not worth giving up constitutionally protected rights for a prescription of quackery.
Remember Radithor? The magic elixir that lead to radium jaw? Unfortunatley it's not a new thing, and quacks will still peddle this kind bullshit for generations to come, and morons will believe it.
Corona virus is the worlds immune system fighting the human plague
Put the alkaline stick back together, then take TDS and PH readings of the water before and after using the sticks.
That would be real and cool test, rather than just throw tantrums without checking it 😊
Kketansa Art the materials breaking down in the water might change things slightly but as soon as you ingest it your body will change it so it doesn’t matter.
@@ketansaart1546 it doesn't matter if it changes the pH the whole idea of changing the pH is already disproven to really affect any of the things people say it does
the Thorium decays to Radon 220, so i would be careful with it. I would imagine the pen would have accumulated a lot of Radon gas in it, the more reason not to open it. Good choice to store the lantern mantle in a sealed glass jar so the Radon doesn't escape.
It's actually a mix of good and bad, the radon will have a hard time escaping (in large quantities) which means it will accumulate. This means that if you open the jar, it will be released all at once. The best way to store stuff that can produce radon is either a permanently sealed container or a well ventilated container/area (if in large quantities).
@@3DRiley_ That is true, but you could just open it outdoors and let the wind carry it away 🤔
Radon 220 has a half life of 55 seconds so only a trace amount of radon will ever accumulate from thorium, especially from such a small sample
@@3DRiley_ radon only lasts about a minute and a bit before it breaks down.
I sure hope he did. It still wouldn't be a huge dose but it is accumulative
It will still accumulate until a certain equilibrium where the radon atoms created through decay will equal the radon atoms decaying, keep in mind that half-life is connected to probability and a single radioactive atom can have a much longer life time (or much shorter) than the half-life.
Also, keep in mind that the actual mean life is always longer than the actual half-life, 1.443 times the half-life.
Taking "pocket sand" to the next level
Hah good one.
what the Fukushima were they thinking selling this pen?
My thoughts? Hidden in plain sight assassination tool.
@@tomh.5750 What, you gift it to someone, and hope they die of cancer in 25 years?
@@Shogun0099 perhaps. Perhaps lace their food or drink with the stuff and destroy them from the inside.
Gord Slater they weren’t thinking, daichi kno?
In the late 1970s, I had a digital watch with a feature called "PermaGlow". The LCD was permanently glowing green. The watch was quite heavy metal construction, and the metal back was embossed with the radiation symbol. I did some reading on these watches, and I believe they were using tritium... Amazing the products which were once available en masse.
I think tritium lights are safe as long as you don't spill the tritium. apparently they go dark within a few decades though.
@@Ass_of_Amalek True. The Phasar "PermaGlow" watch LCD is no longer green in the dark. I guess "PermaGlow" didn't live up to the name... only 20 years.
"My radiation alarm is going off, I'll just turn it off and on again..."
I've never had to Say that....Yet
Or in Chernobyl, "we're doing tests, turn off the alarms till we're done"...
- 3.5 roentgen,not good but not terrible.
- But that's as high as the meter goes sir
I was unaware the GC-10 had a high radiation alarm, I suppose I've never found anything that crunchy in the wild. Good to know!
Also note the SBM-20 geiger muller tube can't detect alpha particles at all, only beta and gamma.
It's rather ineffective at detecting anything less than high energy betas or medium to high energy gammas. It's completely blind to most damaging radiation.
I thought the high energy beta and gamma is the most damaging. Alpha doesn't penetrate very far at all. Its blocked just by the air or a bit of plastic.
@@simontay4851 However Alpha particales carry *MUCH* more energy as they have much greater mass than beta. Traveling at the same velocity they impart around 7000 times more energy than a beta particle. This is why they can do much more damage if injested.
@@simontay4851 iirc alpha only travels around 2cm in air and can be blocked easily by paper or skin so outside the body it isn't that damaging, but all it's energy is absorbed in a small area it is much worse than beta/gamma (I think for the same level of grey it is 20x) if ingested or breathed into the lungs.
@@cumberland1234 alpha particles can penetrate much further than people give it credit for. It CAN penetrate skin, paper, aluminum foil, etc. It won't go very far through these, but it does penetrate, and CAN still cause damage.
You're right that alpha and beta are stopped by the metal. In fact, the metal stops it so well that the charged particles slamming into it release Bremsstrahlung (literally translated that means braking radiation), which is gamma radiation. For this reason, they typically package isotopes that release primarily alpha and beta in lightweight plastic, which slows the particles down much more gently and produces much less Bremsstrahlung. For isotopes that release a bit of everything they do use lead, but often still with a plastic liner on the inside.
A number of high end camera lenses from the 1970's used "rare earth" glass containing thorium. My Olympus 55mm f/1.2 G.Zuiko is an example. Measurably radioactive but supposedly at a safe level 🤞
Thoriated lenses, Uranium glass, Fiestaware and similar radioactive items are quite safe to have and handle because they are solid and unlikely to leach or flake the radioactive materials.
Radium clocks (and other Radium painted items) on the other end must be handled carefully since the paint over time can flake off, so in these cases the first thing to do would be to avoid exposing the painted dials/hands and instead to just leave it alone.
Minerals and ore can shed dust and one should be careful about that (wash your hands and generally don't mess with them too much) but if kept in an enclosure for display purposes are also fine.
Dust like what's inside this wand would be the worst and absolutely to avoid IE just keep the pen as is
Pentax did this too!
@@crimsonhalo13 and Nikon.
Are you sure about the Zuiko ? I never came across a suspicious Z. 55mm 1.2.
Dorf Schmidt I used one in the early 80s (OM2N).
"I wouldn't really recommend stirring anything with random quack sticks." Hahaha gold.
If it's good enough for Donald Duck it's good enough for me, so there! Quack Quack
When I play RPGs, I like my magic wands to have at least 2200+ Healing Power before I go into battle!
Hahaha, I still prefer potions in battle. :D
@@DrakkarCalethiel open the wand, and the powder can make a potion whose healing power is OVER 9000!
Drakkar Calethiel I'm going into battle, and I require your strongest potions
@@deltab9768 But I don't want to get that nasty debuff along with it's healing power. 😂😂😂
@@AreGeeBee Talk to my alchemist first, :D
Radioactive sounding rod. Fantastic, that brought a bit of much needed levity to my day!
An interesting thing about the thorium (and cerium) impregnated mantles is that they are a bit off from a black body in that when heated they emit a disproportionately higher amount of visible light than infrared.
I never finished making it but it was intended to be a self-heating/regulating alcohol lantern similar to alcohol "penny stoves." I was intending to use a thorium gas mantle for the glow. The copper gas tube:
randomer.net/alcohol-stove/lantern-01.jpg
randomer.net/alcohol-stove/lantern-02.jpg
They're definitely bright. My dad was a gas lamp enthusiast, so part of my youth was gas lit.
@@bigclivedotcom When I was a kiddo my parents took me, my brother and sister on many camping trips (many awesome, wonderful times!) and the main evening light source was essentially one of these lanterns: www.amazon.com/Coleman-Premium-Dual-Fuel-Camping-Lantern/dp/B0009PURIQ
@@mduvigneaud Yes the old Tilley lamp. It was bright! (We also had a paraffin heater in the bathroom - no heating back then. There was a hardware store just 5 mins away that had a floor-standing paraffin pump and presumably a tank underground, so there was always lots about. My dad made "swarfega" from paraffin and washing up liquid, usually in used yogurt pots which started to shrivel if left too long. Yeah no I wouldn't go back to the 70s, ta.)
@@lumpyfishgravy Before my dad finished building the chimney and getting the wood-fired stove we used one of these heaters on cold mornings: www.mrheater.com/15-000-btu-single-tank-top-heater.html One of our cats would sometimes sit a little bit too close and her whiskers would start to singe and curl. After which she would walk slightly sideways and bump into things, heh!
Wow!!! I lived in the last valley in Ireland to be connected to the grid in the 70's. During this time, the main light source was the Tilley lamp, little did we know about the radioactivity of the mantle. Thanks again to the David Attenborough of electronics.
A lot of "interesting" exports from China this year.
i dont mind all the Chinese gadgets, just dont like the killer diseases
Saw the Thought Emporium's video, really good. It is worrying what is being touted as good for health or wellbeing, pure quackery, but unlike many snake oils, far from safe to have around you.
Right I'm of to have a radium soda.
Back in the 1900s there was a device designed to be worn by men on their junk that emitted lots of radiation directed at it because this was at the height of the radiation "fad" so the men thought it would be good for them.
It’s like goop by Gwyneth Paltrow. A huge snake oil scam run by a celebrity.
10:30 nearly choked on my drink, had to rewind check he actually said what I thought I heard
Those water purification media balls look strangely like the same stuff I've seen in steam water treatment filters. They worked alongside resin hardwater treatments and had to be flushed regularly.
If there's any truth at all to the product, I'd assume they are the same kind of ion exchanger material that's in the hard water filters?
"This is highly radioactive"
-Holds it in his hands
🥵
I love these radioactive videos you’re doing.
5:45 The longer the half-life, the *less* dangerous the radiation source. It's the stuff with short half-lives that'll kill you in a jiffy.
Talking rubbish
Really more related to mass and decays/sec in a volume. So a little with short half-life or a lot with a long half-life would be similar. But a lot depends on type and energy of the decay products too.
Those little ceramic balls remind me of molecular sieves, used in chemistry...
Or ion exchange resin, perhaps. That might explain the "alkalinizing" effect in water
LOL, they sure do. What are the chances that these are actually molecular sieves some plant used and had to get rid of?
Another excellent way to turn toxic waste into money.
Looks like they changed the recipe for those amping lamp wicks. I built one of those Geiger counters from a kit a while back but don't have anything to check it - it just clicks the background level. When I saw your example with the wick I ran to the workshop and got one of mine out of the drawer but no luck - absolutely no change in radiation level. So, I bought one of those pens and we'll see. Of course, it could be that my Geiger counter kit is not working though but it sounds like it is. I'll know in a month or so....great video as always!
Cheers, John
always a good video when Clive talks about sounding
Next, BigClive dismantles a fluoroscope he found in a old shoe shop. "Let's x-ray little Timmy's feet to see if his shoes fit".
I'm old enough to have sampled some of Clarks foot equipment. As a kid the most terrifying was the automatic foot gauge where you put your foot in a rectangular recess and metal plates closed in on it from all sides.
The Thorium breaks down into Radon, which will diffuse out into the room, and will definitely be in the air you breathe, which is not too good.
@Bruno Mieter The amount of Radon emitted from such a tiny object would be almost undetectable. You only need to worry if you have very large collections.
After the covid craze is over I might visit those places, I want to gather some hot samples. For reasons. :D In Austria I was pretty unlucky so far.
Radon(220) from Thorium has a very short half live, though, seconds. Thorium(222) from the ground is from the Uranium decay series principally, about 4 days half live.
Loved watching bigclivedaddy whip out his pen. That Geiger counter got really excited.
Let's just be thankful that when you report a radioactive product to the USNRC (or similar), they don't fuck around
Very soon on eBay: "Magic microwand, cures coronavirus very healing master health hot product"
I'm sure it already appears.
4:04 "It cures everything". Well sellers, there's your out-of-context marketing quote!
Technically if it kills you it kills everything that was wrong with you too lmao
Hi Clive, you may see if u can come across any WW2 microwave TR tubes which contain a healthy amount of radium 226. Some of the samples I’ve seen will output about 12,000 CPM of mostly gamma rays. They have small quartz windows in their metal holders so the radiation is somewhat directed. The ones that were built for the X band vs S or L band have the smallest windows. Most will not have the standard radiation symbol printed on its case, but will have an engraved very long serial number on it. Most are silver plated. Some are actually made from a silver alloy.
Turning the Geiger counter off because it won't stop beeping reminds me of a story about someone who theorized that their CO counter going off was making them wake up with a headache, thus, they took the batteries out.
"Don't stir things with random quack sticks." Good, solid advice.
"Zero point energy" pen? That's worthy of a Nobel prize!
no its worthy of jail time for fraud.
To be fair, it will output energy for the next billion years, and doesn't require any energy input to do so. That's the closest you can get to ZPE, it's just that the energy is radiation.
was it made by that guy from the incredibles.
@@ucitymetalhead or maybe from reverse engineered ancient tech
The mind boggles at the thought of a radioactive willy reamer. Honestly, the things you fellas come up with!
Sp glad I stuck around for Clive's suggestion of urethral sounding with a radioactive pen.
“Dying to have radioactive cures.”
My dog ate my 'pen' & he is very well-preserved . . . so far
"You don't want to breathe it in"
*takes deep breath*
The stick looks like it is filled with molecular sieve beads. They are used to filter certain chemicals based on the pore sizes in the material. They are used in chemistry labs and seen in NileRed or NurdRage videos on occasion.
Would love to see you get into geiger counters. You would be amazed at all the radioactive things and products around us today.
If you could find one that reads Beta Alpha Gamma and x-ray… You would have a lot of fun I promise you.
If you have the budget for it then I highly suggest a Ludlum model three, with a DIY scintillation probe from the “iRad lab”
Scintillator probe will allow you to pick up sources from several yards away. Also add a thin window mica “pancake“ probe to that bundle and you’d be ready for anything.
If you don’t have the budget for that then look into the cheaper versions of geiger counters that used pancake probes. There’s one available on eBay that looks very similar to your unit. And your unit could probably be customized to except a pancake probes.
The SBt10a or SBT11a pancake probe with a unit similar to yours works really well. Of course the scintillation probe allows you to find sources from a distance… But if you’re only testing sources you already have, then a cheap counter and pancake probe is definitely a great way to go! The SBM20 tube that’s on your counter is a really good tube for the money.
Always enjoy your videos! Thanks for the content!
Clive, you got that pen VERY close to the GM tube terminals - I was waiting for you to get a zap!
This is not ElectroBOOM!
Wow, it's been a while since I've seen that Geiger counter. Need to find more stuff to test with it.
Thorium isn't so bad. They used to coat the filaments and cathodes of vacuum tubes with the stuff to get significantly better emissions. Maybe it would be neat to see just how much comes off of them cold / hot by pulling one out.
I've also heard that runaway high voltage circuits in televisions can cause color CRTs to emit x radiation and to become slightly radioactive. This could easily be put to the test, I think.
Next to "sitting to close to the screen would cause near-sightedness" (something actually proven to be true due to the smartphone generation), the x-ray risk was one of the reasons for teaching children sit further away from the television.
I will always and forever remember the story of Eben Byers, which I learned from Theodore Gray's excellent book on the elements. It serves both as a cautionary tale and a reminder that dangerous quackery is not a new phenomenon.
To (badly) summarize: Eben Byers was a wealthy young man in the '20s or 30s. At that time, they sold a quack product called Radithor, which was (as far as I know) just water with some form of radium and thorium in it. Apparently, he drank several bottles of the stuff per day. The radiation's bad enough, but because radium's chemically somewhat similar to calcium, it really likes to accumulate in bones. Needless to say, it didn't end well for him. A headline at the time described the effects very well: "The radium water worked fine, until his jaw came off."
Years ago, the maintenance staff at a building I worked in took a malfunctioning smoke detector out of service. At the time 4x5" 3000 ISO B&W Polaroid sheet film was still available, and we stocked it in the building for use in oscilloscope cameras... I put the smoke detector on top of the film for a few days, and the emissions from the americium-241 in the smoke detector made a nice radiographic picture of the area of the smoke detector beneath the emitter.
Amazing that stuff gets through customs no problem at all, but if I've got an extra pack of tobacco matey, there's a bloody inquisition !
Same with stupidly high power laser modules. No problem. Says on the customs form. $10 led disco light. :-)
bought spare headphone cushions for my sennheiser headphones from CN since they're painfully hard to get locally (and ridiculously expensive if you manage to find the originals). they got confiscated and destroyed by customs. but radioactive pens are fine...?! dafuq
"You dont want to breath this in"
**deep breath**
Enjoyed watching every second of this video! lookin forward to the next on:)
"Radioactive urethral sound" well that's something I never thought I'd hear
And to think people bathe in that stuff on some beaches in Brazil lol
Also good call on the sealed glass jar, as it decays radon gas could be released.
What, where? Never knew Brazil had radioactive beaches
@@crackedemerald4930 don't quote me on this, but I think some are around rio, if you type in "bionerd23 beach" into youtube search you'll get a lot of information from her about it (plus she makes amazing content, well used to, she's been a bit quiet as of late)
Or type in the youtube url and add this to the end: RvgAx1yIKjg
"You don't want to breathe it in"
*Sniff sniff*
4:12 "you don't want to breath it in" *breaths in*
I found this to be very interesting, I’d like to see more of the products being tested against your Geiger counter, providing the Geiger counter is correct. But knowing your videos I would assume it is.
When I was a small child they had xray viewers at some shoe stores! You stepped up and slid your feet into the machine and you could see the bones in your feet!😂
I remember those. That was back when TV doctors recommended cigarettes too.
I remember those machines as a very young kid, they were in Clark’s shoe shops.
Paul Drake / I watched Fred and Barney advertise and smoke cigarettes on TV😂
These Fluoroscopes were mostly dangerous to the people who worked at the stores and were regularly next to the machine while it was in use.
Yep, I bet they were.
Thorium emits a 2.6 MeV gamma ray, which is really highly penetrating.
heh. That's energetic enough to create electron/positron pairs.
The gammas from are from thallium 208. The decay chain goes:
232Thorium -> 228Radium -> 228Actinium -> 228Thorium -> 224Radium -> 220Radon -> 216Polonium -> 212Lead -> 212Bismuth -> 208Thallium
Those beads inside that water stirring stick look identical to the water filter on my portable humidifier
“It’s healthy because it makes my skin tingle.”
The pre-video ad was for one of those ionic foot spas. 😆
10:32 I dislike the motion. I don't like the words either. This has began to haunt me.
Ordered the BangGood Version of that Mueller Detector. Works quite good for a under $30.00 Geiger detector. Wish it had the LCD counter incorporated like yours. I had to do a Arduino version.
The Coleman lantern mantels have the same effect. When I was training for nuclear emergency response in the late 80's early 90's we used them as a training source.
When I was in the Boy Scouts everyone brought those on camping trips, I shudder to think how close I was in proximity and for how long. Maybe that's what made my dental fillings glow in the dark... 😊
It's highly radioactive hang on let me put it under the table.
Nuts start screaming in terror...
Wonder how this compares to TIG welding rod (thoriated).
I'm a secret nerd and also secretively attracted to your rugged looks lol This is awesome content dude keep it up!!!!
I’ve seen the same beads in a faucet water purifier, I thought they were to prevent scale accumulation. But none were conductive or metal type
What happened with the FLIR phone? ;-) I was just watching at and it dissapeared again to private video...
too much backlash of it being too inaccurate and useless, aka idiots taking it too serious.
Rob Maybe thé folk down the pub objected to being shown as having hypothermia - they all seemed to be around 31 C! Maybe it was the emissivity of their shiny bald heads!
@@Richardincancale Obviously your skin temperature is less than your internal temperature. Air is cold and all that.
What is that? I didn't see the video
You mean Cat phone (with flir camera)?
"random quack sticks" perfect for the random quacks that would buy those sort of items.....
I was waiting for Clive to make contact with the metal pen and the ends of the geiger! Although there is little current behind the EHT there is probably around 500v there - enough for a nice tingle!
We used to use those mantles in our gas lantern in the 70s. Don't know if you have used one but they make a steady flow of air from convection because they get so hot. Plus you have to put the mantle on the lantern and set the mantle on fire and it burns to ash and the ash part is what glows. Be interesting to see if they put off radioactivity when in use.
Always wondered about the health risk of replacing the used Thorium mantles as they crumble into dust after being used and it was common practise to blow the dust out of the lamp assembly.
Watching the counter go up is like watching the covid case count!
When I as young we had those Coleman gasoline lanterns that used the mantels like that we also had a old RV that had LP gas lights in it that used them too I still have one of the lanterns I bought as a teenager for my hunting trips it used unleaded gasoline can’t hardly find the mantels for it .
Nice! Got my own pen. Wonder if yours is less radioactive than mine. On my NR-1050 geiger counter it can float around 4 µSv/h when placed optimally which is still a bit more distance than you have since yours is open and mine is a (budget) commercial product in case (so unless opening the case... which I have done to take a look but not done measurements like that).
None the less a very cool quack product. I'll certainly order some more radioactive stuff of varying kinds before they're outlawed.
Fun story. I brought the wand and geiger counter to work yesterday. Made really well conversation items, first showing wand and no geiger, told them about the supposed effect of waving it above food and drinks, and then peoples reactions when they found out it's radioactive was hillarious. Some bursted out in laughter while wondering about those people who actually believe in the "magic". Then others when they realized it was radioactive became affraid of it. You could just as well have presented a mouse or spider - almost that kind of reaction. Of course it "helped" that I've set the alarm on the geiger to a mere 2 µSv/h. The gadgets freaks said they would have bought it themself as well. Of course not believing in the quackery but for the curiosity and for collecting relatively safe items to trigger geiger counters.
Clive, I wondering if there is the possibility for a crossover video with the channel "Periodic Videos" to have a visit to an atomic lab to assay your marvelous pen and energy pendant?
Here is their video on thorium: ruclips.net/video/2yZGcr0mpw0/видео.html
A video containing both Big Clive and Sir Martyn Poliakoff would make me melt in nerdish ecstasy.
Amazing, you can post a video about radioactive goods anyone can buy, but post a video on mesuring thermals on humans with the non-radioactive cat s61 during a human malware epidemic and videos disapear... youtube has bazaar standards.
Yeah, it's a real flea market.
@@SimonSideburns HAHA, Nice. I han't noticed I lost the fight with auto complete... With the adition of your comment, It kind of works anyway.
@@crashk6 A.I. always wins at the end.
@@adamrak7560 You'd think that would be a sobering notion to more people.
It might be fun if you demonstrated the radioactivity with a cloud chamber. Seeing the radioactive particles leaving condensation trails might be more shocking than your Geiger counter.
Radioactive is one thing, selling it as a health product is insane, filling with powder is even more insane as it is not effectively removed. IIRC you get rid of half of your intake in 14 years. Often used as xray source behind a heavy screen. Definitely keep it in the pen!
Guessing Americium from out moded Smoke Detectors. Can't imagine how many Colman Mantels I replaced spreading Thorium dust all over the inside of a tent .
Where do I find this “Thot Emporium”?
I think its called "twitch".
shout outs to The Thought Emporium, my favorite science Ch. glad Clive likes em too
For many years, my family used to go on holiday to a croft in Aberdeenshire. There was no mains electricity available, so the lighting was by gas mantle.
Just to clarify for anybody who is not familiar with gas mantles, the example shown by Clive is in its 'unburned' state and consists of a cotton mesh, which has been soaked in a solution containing Thorium. In this state, the mantle behaves, mechanically, like any other piece of cotton.
However, when the mantle is installed in a lamp and ignited with a gas supply, the cotton burns away leaving an incredibly fragile and brittle chemical mesh, which crumbles into very fine powder at the slightest touch.
Over the years, we destroyed and replaced hundreds of these mantles. Who knows how much of the dust was inhaled!
I was ignorant of the fact that the mantles were radioactive until I asked my Daughters Science teacher if there was a DIY solution to making them, as they were becoming hard to find.
It was only then that I found out what made them glow so brightly!
My Dad died from Leukaemia in 2002. I have often wondered if the little gas mantles played some part in his demise.
I'm sorry for your loss. Fuck cancer.