6 ms·

A sea of sparks: Seeing radioactivity

74 points by maurycyz 6mo ago

dvh 6mo ago
I tried the same with bananas. Got nothing.
- thadt 6mo ago
  Bananas are like XML that way. If you're not getting the results you want, you're just not using enough of them.
- kergonath 6mo ago
  Potassium-40 is not an alpha emitter.
  - fecal_henge 6mo ago
    Maybe he used banana as the scintillator.
  - DetroitThrow 6mo ago
    That's unrelated. He's been diligently substituting bananas in many experiments to mostly disappointment.
    - onraglanroad 6mo ago
      ...but occasional delight.
    - marginalia_nu 6mo ago
      The banhattan project has been a fiasco. Chicago Peel 1 accomplished fission of fruit flies, which we felt was promising. The subsequent banana nuclear bomb tests have been an unmitigated disaster. There are so many damn bananas in and around the bikini atolls, just nothing. Not even a fizzle. Mojave is littered with peels. Oppenheimer slipped and broke his leg. Rumors are the Soviets are using avocados. Maybe that is the key. We are now constructing a demon core from an avocado split lengthwise.
      - selimthegrim 6mo ago
        This puts Raffi in a whole new light. Also maybe the Banana ball team are refugee all-stars.
      - thenthenthen 6mo ago
        Haha brilliant thank you for your comment!
lukasschwab 6mo ago
You won't make one at home, but cloud chambers[^1] reveal individual alpha particle tracks. There's one in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris — blew my mind! [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber Edit: turns out people make these at home all the time. Sick!
- lukan 6mo ago
  Well, google for "DIY cloud chamber" did result in quite some entries. Apart from youtube channels, with the first entry a guide from CERN: https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/how-make-your-own-cloud-chamber https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/how-make-your-own-cl...
- alnwlsn 6mo ago
  This can be done at home with a little effort. Less effort if you can get dry ice easily. https://hackaday.com/2019/01/13/see-the-radioactive-world-with-this-peltier-cloud-chamber/ https://hackaday.com/2019/01/13/see-the-radioactive-world-wi...
- Yenrabbit 6mo ago
  You can easily make them at home (source, I did last weekend!). - Dry ice (mine came from something shipped cold) - Dark piece of metal (I used a 3D printer hot bed) on top of dry ice to get cold - IPA vapour (I poured some on a shop towel) - Some transparent container to house it all - I found a glass display cube on the side of the road, fish tanks or Tupperware also work. - Torch or something to provide side lighting Very cool to see evidence of the particles zooming around us, can highly recommend.
r2_pilot 6mo ago
If you haven't experienced a spinthariscope, I can highly recommend it. I bought one as a Christmas present for a buddy and we both enjoy its demonstration of radioactivity.
- jcims 6mo ago
  UnitedNuclear has these and a bunch of other interesting tidbits if anyone wants to give it a try. I bought a small bottle of heavy water as well, which I of course sampled and can confirm it has a slightly sweet taste to it. You really have to get your eyes adjusted to the dark to see anything with the spinthariscope. It ends up looking mostly like static on a green crt, but if your only reference frame is a cloud chamber, the volume of particles that are emitted from such a weak source is pretty remarkable.
cbm-vic-20 6mo ago
Don't miss a chance to see the Cherenkov radiation effect at your local research reactor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation
anfractuosity 6mo ago
https://dberard.com/home-built-stm/ https://dberard.com/home-built-stm/ shows individual atoms.
DoctorOetker 6mo ago
I was hoping this would be an artists project page describing the passive imaging of radiation (i.e. not a simple X-ray scan). Imagine a planar array where each pixel gathers counts like an MCA (multichannel analyzer), mounted in some lead pinhole camera obscura. This would give an extremely wide range of channels didactically illustrating the presence of calcium in gypsum (dryboard etc), visually show backscatter, etc. Such pictures of modern and old city scenes would be mesmerizing to watch, partially seeing into buildings, the ground, ...
- jareklupinski 6mo ago
  currently trying to make a flip-dot display (think https://theartistbreakfast.com/works/spectral-flashbacks-series https://theartistbreakfast.com/works/spectral-flashbacks-ser...) but with some kind of radiation detector behind each pixel that will flip the dot when something passes through i made a small 3x3 proof of concept using more expensive geiger tubes, and their really long 'z-axis' lengths made 'traces' happen very often, like a persistent cloud chamber trying to find a reliable semiconductor (read:cheaper) method i can scale to an arbitrary number of pixels, but something seems to happen in between the bench and the wall :(
  - DoctorOetker 6mo ago
    How many pixels would you aim for? I have considered * scanning a linear array of BPW34 photodiodes, in a similar spirit to a scanner to cover a plane, each photodiode going to its own "MCA circuit" (TIA->cheap audio codec like those from Everest Semi). Either direct measurement of generated charge pulses or covering the photodiode with phosphor on aluminum foil or so * cloud or bubble chamber (cloud chamber is less dense and will generate fewer events, so probably bubble chamber): instead of needing a large 2D or 1D array of parallel circuits, we image and track generated charged particles and use the trajectory starting end (less curved) to determine the source direction! * consider X-ray crystallography, an incoming straight beam can diffract in many directions on a monocrystal. rotating say a silicon wafer, and measuring the incoming photon energies with one or more photodiode/MCA circuits we can assign a source likelihood distribution by keeping track of the orientation of the monocrystal. akin to sparse sampling but instead of masks its diffraction patterns. If you have better ideas or variations in mind, let me know!

74 points by maurycyz 6mo ago

dvh 6mo ago

I tried the same with bananas. Got nothing.

thadt 6mo ago
Bananas are like XML that way. If you're not getting the results you want, you're just not using enough of them.
kergonath 6mo ago
Potassium-40 is not an alpha emitter.
- fecal_henge 6mo ago
  Maybe he used banana as the scintillator.
- DetroitThrow 6mo ago
  That's unrelated. He's been diligently substituting bananas in many experiments to mostly disappointment.
  - onraglanroad 6mo ago
    ...but occasional delight.
  - marginalia_nu 6mo ago
    The banhattan project has been a fiasco. Chicago Peel 1 accomplished fission of fruit flies, which we felt was promising. The subsequent banana nuclear bomb tests have been an unmitigated disaster. There are so many damn bananas in and around the bikini atolls, just nothing. Not even a fizzle. Mojave is littered with peels. Oppenheimer slipped and broke his leg. Rumors are the Soviets are using avocados. Maybe that is the key. We are now constructing a demon core from an avocado split lengthwise.
    - selimthegrim 6mo ago
      This puts Raffi in a whole new light. Also maybe the Banana ball team are refugee all-stars.
    - thenthenthen 6mo ago
      Haha brilliant thank you for your comment!

lukasschwab 6mo ago

You won't make one at home, but cloud chambers[^1] reveal individual alpha particle tracks. There's one in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris — blew my mind! [^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber Edit: turns out people make these at home all the time. Sick!

lukan 6mo ago
Well, google for "DIY cloud chamber" did result in quite some entries. Apart from youtube channels, with the first entry a guide from CERN: https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/how-make-your-own-cloud-chamber https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/how-make-your-own-cl...
alnwlsn 6mo ago
This can be done at home with a little effort. Less effort if you can get dry ice easily. https://hackaday.com/2019/01/13/see-the-radioactive-world-with-this-peltier-cloud-chamber/ https://hackaday.com/2019/01/13/see-the-radioactive-world-wi...
Yenrabbit 6mo ago
You can easily make them at home (source, I did last weekend!). - Dry ice (mine came from something shipped cold) - Dark piece of metal (I used a 3D printer hot bed) on top of dry ice to get cold - IPA vapour (I poured some on a shop towel) - Some transparent container to house it all - I found a glass display cube on the side of the road, fish tanks or Tupperware also work. - Torch or something to provide side lighting Very cool to see evidence of the particles zooming around us, can highly recommend.

r2_pilot 6mo ago

If you haven't experienced a spinthariscope, I can highly recommend it. I bought one as a Christmas present for a buddy and we both enjoy its demonstration of radioactivity.

jcims 6mo ago
UnitedNuclear has these and a bunch of other interesting tidbits if anyone wants to give it a try. I bought a small bottle of heavy water as well, which I of course sampled and can confirm it has a slightly sweet taste to it. You really have to get your eyes adjusted to the dark to see anything with the spinthariscope. It ends up looking mostly like static on a green crt, but if your only reference frame is a cloud chamber, the volume of particles that are emitted from such a weak source is pretty remarkable.

cbm-vic-20 6mo ago

Don't miss a chance to see the Cherenkov radiation effect at your local research reactor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation

anfractuosity 6mo ago

https://dberard.com/home-built-stm/ https://dberard.com/home-built-stm/ shows individual atoms.

DoctorOetker 6mo ago

I was hoping this would be an artists project page describing the passive imaging of radiation (i.e. not a simple X-ray scan). Imagine a planar array where each pixel gathers counts like an MCA (multichannel analyzer), mounted in some lead pinhole camera obscura. This would give an extremely wide range of channels didactically illustrating the presence of calcium in gypsum (dryboard etc), visually show backscatter, etc. Such pictures of modern and old city scenes would be mesmerizing to watch, partially seeing into buildings, the ground, ...

jareklupinski 6mo ago
currently trying to make a flip-dot display (think https://theartistbreakfast.com/works/spectral-flashbacks-series https://theartistbreakfast.com/works/spectral-flashbacks-ser...) but with some kind of radiation detector behind each pixel that will flip the dot when something passes through i made a small 3x3 proof of concept using more expensive geiger tubes, and their really long 'z-axis' lengths made 'traces' happen very often, like a persistent cloud chamber trying to find a reliable semiconductor (read:cheaper) method i can scale to an arbitrary number of pixels, but something seems to happen in between the bench and the wall :(
- DoctorOetker 6mo ago
  How many pixels would you aim for? I have considered * scanning a linear array of BPW34 photodiodes, in a similar spirit to a scanner to cover a plane, each photodiode going to its own "MCA circuit" (TIA->cheap audio codec like those from Everest Semi). Either direct measurement of generated charge pulses or covering the photodiode with phosphor on aluminum foil or so * cloud or bubble chamber (cloud chamber is less dense and will generate fewer events, so probably bubble chamber): instead of needing a large 2D or 1D array of parallel circuits, we image and track generated charged particles and use the trajectory starting end (less curved) to determine the source direction! * consider X-ray crystallography, an incoming straight beam can diffract in many directions on a monocrystal. rotating say a silicon wafer, and measuring the incoming photon energies with one or more photodiode/MCA circuits we can assign a source likelihood distribution by keeping track of the orientation of the monocrystal. akin to sparse sampling but instead of masks its diffraction patterns. If you have better ideas or variations in mind, let me know!