Old, vintage Geiger counters are a lot of fun. Not only they are built like tanks but also have a certain character and feel to them. Unfortunately, the calibration on them might be a bit off as a result of their ageing components. Today I want to show you how you can easily calibrate your […]
When I first moved to Berlin, someone told me that there is a radioactive metro station somewhere in the city. Since then, I was on a mission to find it but unfortunately, with little to no success… until recently. One of the most iconic places in Berlin must be the Brandenburger Tor and only one […]
Introduction Today I want to show you an item that you can find in a hardware store and it is radioactive. Let’s take a closer look at the thoriated Tungsten electrodes! Main information There are three types of thoriated Tungsten electrodes with the only difference being the amount of Thorium in them. Yellow ones contain […]
Today we will take a closer look at a radioactive, soviet switch, the BH-45M! The production of BH-45M switches started in 1945 and continues till this day, this being said, not all of those switches are radioactive. Units produced until 1965 used radium paint but in later models, radium paint was replaced by a nonradioactive […]
Today we will explore the radioactivity and uses of Caesium 137! Caesium is probably best known for its high reactivity and low melting point of only 28.5°C and it was first discovered in 1860 by two German scientists, Robert Bunsen and Gustav Kirchhoff. It has atomic number of 55 and has only one natural isotope, Caesium 133 […]
Today we will take a closer look at another naturally occurring radioactive element, Lanthanum! Lanthanum is a rare earth element and it’s the first element in the lanthanide series. It has an atomic number of 57 and was first discovered by a Swedish chemist, Carl Gustaf Mosander in 1839 but pure Lanthanum wasn’t obtained until […]
Cobalt 60 is a radioactive isotope of Cobalt and it is produced by neutron activation of stable Cobalt 59 in nuclear reactors. Since it has a short half-life of only 5.3 years, it does not occur in nature and all samples that exist are synthetic. A single gram of Co-60 has an activity of 44TBq […]
In the 1940s, scientists and lens designers at Kodak, a world-famous camera and filmmaker, started experimenting with mixing rare earth elements into their lenses. After a series of tests, they found out that by adding Thorium 232 to lenses they can improve the quality of images produced. Not long after, other companies followed and as […]
History On July 16th, 1945 the United States tested its first nuclear weapon at the Trinity test site located in the Nevada desert, New Mexico. The bomb tested there was called the Gadget and it was a prototype of a Plutonium implosion-type bomb, similar to the one which was dropped on Nagasaki (Fat-Man). When the […]
Uranium and Thorium along with Potassium are the most common, naturally occurring radioactive isotopes but there are also many other, lesser-known ones. One of them is Lutetium, which will be today’s main topic. Lutetium is the last element in the Lanthanide series and it has been discovered in 1907 by French scientist Georges Urbain. Today […]