Yes, you can get great deals on Uranium these days
My (smallest) Geiger counter is a GQ GMC-300e that was $99. It reads beta, gamma and xray radiation. It doesn't do alpha, if it did then this Uranium sample from Lisbon Valley Utah would be about 40% higher! The video was short because as the Geiger got so hot I wanted to move away at high speed.
The final reading was 6200 clicks per minute. My antique radium painted wristwatch was only 220cpm or so! These are very, very hot rocks-like that old film noir movie "Kiss Me Deadly" from the 50s, minus the howling noise.
No relation to the awesome Lita Ford song of the same name.
This sample is unrefined uranium ore. I've tested a few old wristwatches and found Radium in them. Back in the old days companies would paint Radium on watches and clocks and other things to make them glow in the dark! A lot of workers who did the painting died awful deaths, but not before developing disfiguring tumors. A famous group are known as the "Radium Girls" who would purse their lips on their paintbrushes to get a real fine, pointed tip to paint the clock faces with more precision. Turns out putting radioactive brushes in your mouth is a bad idea. Radium is very similar to calcium, it has a bad habit of swapping places with the calcium in your bones and causing massive health problems.
Alpha particles are stopped by your skin. Even a sheet of paper will stop them so Geiger counters that can detect alpha radiation are more open and this fragile: the plastic case on my Geiger is more than enough to block all alpha even if it was sensitive to it. To stop beta radiation you'd need a sheet of aluminum. Gamma and x-rays blast through all sorts of things but are significantly stopped (but not totally) by lead. Surprisingly, scientists disagree on the definition of what constitutes gamma vs X-rays.
I got interested in radioactive things when I fixed an old antique watch. I fell asleep with it on and in the dark noticed that the hands weren't "glowing" but we're actually sparkling! It was so weird that I researched and found that the watch was painted with Radium. On the bottom of the face near the 6 o'clock position was a tiny "Ra" that could only be seem with a magnifying glass. Ra=Radium. Deadly, deadly radium.
After getting me Geiger counter I found another, unlabeled, watch that was even more radioactive in my collection.
Recently I ordered the uraninite ore from LifeTech and they sent it out properly packed and with no problems. It is way more radioactive than my old wristwatches.
So, besides listening to the tell-tale clicking of the Geiger counter what can you do with radioactive minerals and such? Well, my next post will be about the cool Nuclear Cloud Chamber that let's you see the trails left by the path of radioactive particles zinging through a cloud of supercooled alcohol vapor-the best part of that it is super cheap and easy to make!
How did I get interested in radioactive stuff? Well, shown above are my gold Lord Elgin Swiss watch with Radium glowing hands and hour markers and a Uranium laced glass marble. I got the watch for free in a box of 'junk' at a garage sale. I fell asleep while wearing it and in the darkness brought it up to my eyes to see. It was then I noticed that it wasn't just 'glowing' in the dark it was 'sparkling'!!!! This sparkling was a scintillation every few seconds, like a weird mini-lightening strike: kind of slow, like when a big lightening bolt takes a while to branch out in the sky. I did a little research and found out my cool gold watch was radioactive--and the reason it was is that the hands were painted with Radium, sometimes written near the 6 o'clock position as 'Ra'.
The Uranium glass marble changes color in sunlight due to, well: Uranium in the glass. Many antique (and new) glass contains Uranium for this color-changing effect. Uranium glass is also called "Vaseline Glass". It's all slightly radioactive. So are thorium laced gas lantern mantles for camping. The little sock looking wick is radioactive.
Fiestaware ceramic bowls and plates (especially the red colored ones) are so radioactive that people break them into pieces and sell them to Geiger counter owners like me as a test source!
Name What is it? Distance traveled
through open air
Alpha Physical particle equaling a Helium nucleus 2-3cm
Beta Physical particle equaling an electron 2-3m
Gamma Not radioactive decay, just energy burst 500m
accompanying alpha or beta radiation.
The same as an x-ray, but arising from
different sources.
Neutron Physical particle made up of 1 up quark and 1000s of meters
2 down quarks.
Name Symbol Makeup Charge Speed Atomic Mass Units
Alpha α 2 protons & 2 Neutrons + + Slow 4
Beta β 1 electron - Fast or Slow 1/2000
Gamma γ Photons/ Neutral Speed of light 0
electromagnetic waves
Neutron n 1 up & 2 down quarks Neutral 2.2km/S-14,000km/S 1
(~5% speed of light)
Notes:
An AMU (Atomic Mass Unit) is equal to 1/12 the mass of a Carbon-12 atom.
Slow Neutrons are called "Thermal" and fast ones are called "Fast" neutrons.
An alpha particle is double positive "++".
Gamma rays are produced by atomic nuclei and x-rays are created by accelerating electrons, but they are basically the same type of wave energy.
Lead only approximately halves the gamma/x-ray amounts. A 1/2" of lead stops about half the waves trying to get through. When beta radiation hits lead sometimes a new type of radiation is created that is more dangerous! This is Bremsstrahlung radiation (braking/deceleration). Lead barely interacts with neutron radiation, water or hydrogen-containing compounds such as common paraffin wax are much better shielding material.
By the way, another great place to creep around and find info like this is the Oak Ridge National Lab at https://libcat.ornl.gov/ which has tons of DECLASSIFIED reports of various techniques for radioactive fun. The directory names look like years, but the files inside them are all scrambled up--so just poke around. A cool file I found was "The Preparation, Properties, and Uses of Americium - 241, Alpha-, Gamma-, and Neutron Sources."
