Sorry if this is a stupid question. I am a Hobbyist who likes tinker with stuff. I have no experience with radioactive isotopes yet. However, I have a Geiger counter, free time, and no fear of becoming the Incredible Hulk.
extra flavor but it hurts
My quite radioactive piece of Strontium-90 making my GMC 300e plus tube glow. i captured this using a DSLR camera with a 30 second exposure time. From what i have seen, this is where the gas inside of the GM tube is being ionised and starts to glow. Going to get a new Geiger counter soon, probably a RadiaScan 701a to measure the radioactivity of my Strontium-90 as my current counters max out.
Yes, I did come up with this idea after looking up those radiation-eating fungi from Chernobyl.
Yes, I know the mechanism through which they eat radiation is still poorly understood and is probably not very efficient.
Still, though, living creatures need (relatively) very little energy to survive. A human being - already quite a large creature - needs only 100 watts at rest. Most RTGs on space probes can easily do ten times that, and they themselves aren't very efficient either.
Hello.
So, I'm restoring an old Geiger counter. So far I got everything working, now I need to calibrate it.
Here's what I have:
- 44.5 years old Strontium-90 isotope, unknown mass
- Rated 6 microcurie ( Β΅Ci ) when it was manufactured
- Measured 14.5 miliroentgen/hour when it was manufactured
Question: With this info, and Strontium-90's decay, how many miliroentgen/hour can be expected today? (44.5 years old)
Also please include the math behind it, not just the solution. I tried to figure it out on my own, but couldn't.
Known info:
- Strontium-90's half life: 28.79 years
Info sources on Strontium-90:
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Strontium-90#section=Experimental-Properties
Thank you :)
Title says it all. A 50's atomic age song called Strontium 90. It sounds like any other 50's song, but for some reason I can't find anything on the song, or Ann & Marti Cleary as a whole. I remember the full song being somewhere on YouTube in a video titled:
"cool 50's song"
or something like that. The video was an image of a green and white record cover, presumably the album it was in. It was an older video, from 2007-2009. Thanks to anyone who can help me find it!
EDIT: Here's a lead. A short clip of the song in the Smithsonian archives.
EDIT 2: u/wildneonsins has concluded that the Smithsonian clip is not the song by Ann & Marti Cleary. This website shows that a magazine listed the true song in its contents, but no recording or copy is available.
nuff said
Meanwhile Caesium-137 from Chernobyl is still spread throughout Europe and is still being found in animals, plants soil and water sources. Fukushima-derived radiocesium had spread into the whole western North Pacific Ocean transported by the North Pacific current from Japan to the Gulf of Alaska. It has been measured in the surface layer down to 200 meters and south of the current area down to 400 meters.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium-90
I Found a terminal in the Nuka Cola plant that was talking about various batches of Nuka Cola and to me it all suggests that they were grooming the American Public for nuclear war.
Dextromethamphetamine is used is used to treat ADHD and narcolepsy. My take is that this was used for people who would have had a hard time with what was going on. I am sure day an night cycles were thrown out of whack with all the fallout from the bombs. It could have also been used to create more compliant vault dwellers.
Arsenic in low doses was used to treat psoriasis and syphilis. I would imagine with limited resources these two things would be difficult to treat post war. Not really sure what else arsenic does. But there was something I read about it being used as part of a treatment for cancer in your blood.
Strontium-90 is a radio active isotope. This could have been used to give the people a base tolerance for the outcome of radioactive exposure.
We found an old sample of strontium (Sr90), which has a half-life of 29.1years.
We measured the radiation activity of the sample 14 years ago and got the reading of 2780 pulses/min, with a background radiation of 210 pulses/min included.
What would the radiation activity be today? (assuming the background radiation is the same as then)
I know there are formulas but, can't you just in this case do this
14(years)/29.1(years) = 0.481
Multiply that with what we had from the beginning (excluding the background radiation ofc)
2780-210 = 2570
2570 * 0.481 = 1236.2 <---- the radiation activity of the strontium, now add background radiation
1236.2 + 210 = 1446.2 pulses/min is what you would expect to measure today?
Well atleast that's what my intuition tells me but the formula the teacher has written is
Radiation after time (t) = radiation from start * (1/2) ^ (time since start / half-life)
--> radiation after 14 years = 2570 * (1/2)^(14/29.1) = 1841.2 pulses/min
Can someone please explain what is the right way to do this?
Meanwhile Caesium-137 from Chernobyl is still spread throughout Europe and is still being found in animals, plants soil and water sources. Fukushima-derived radiocesium had spread into the whole western North Pacific Ocean transported by the North Pacific current from Japan to the Gulf of Alaska. It has been measured in the surface layer down to 200 meters and south of the current area down to 400 meters.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium-137 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strontium-90
