Radioactivity fun!

RE: Radioactivity fun!

Jan Cumps — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 11:19:46 GMT

When I was in the army 2nd half of the 80s and moved to West-Germany, we all had an aluminum tube with a clip in our jacket pocket. To be worn all time when in duty.

If you unscrewed it, there was a valve in there, to collect the radiation level over time. There was nothing else in there except protection to avoid the tube from breaking.

They were not supposed to be used for checking individual soldier's levels. Would be collected for the whole battery together without info on who used a particular pen.

I tried to google for an image but didn't get a result that looked like the thing yet.

edit: this is the closest I could find:

[View:/resized-image/__size/358x498/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-a13cf54f-136c-4ae4-b294-d4214d9a785e/4861.contentimage_5F00_193183.png:358:498] [View:/resized-image/__size/512x497/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-a13cf54f-136c-4ae4-b294-d4214d9a785e/6507.contentimage_5F00_193184.png:512:497]

Edit edit: also had something like this in the same pocket, but also in a aluminum pen-style tube:

[View:/resized-image/__size/620x620/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-a13cf54f-136c-4ae4-b294-d4214d9a785e/4477.contentimage_5F00_193185.png:620:620]

That's for when you become victim of nerve agent.

Because in that case you have no muscle control, you have to hope that someone sees you, finds the pen in your pocket and shoots the antidote in your upper leg through your pants.

Then they have to hang the pen on the outside of your pocket, to indicate you've been antidoted. Because two of these injections aren't good-for-ya.

RE: Radioactivity fun!

jc2048 — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 10:18:28 GMT

That's an interesting looking G-M tube. I've got one that I bought years ago (1970s - they were sold as

'surplus' at the time, so I don't suppose it cost me very much), but I never did anything with it.

[View:/resized-image/__size/450x600/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-a13cf54f-136c-4ae4-b294-d4214d9a785e/contentimage_5F00_193182.jpg:450:600]

This one was intended for use with a piece of British civil defence equipment. It has a rubber boot around

it to give some protection and the base is in the form of a plug with two terminals. That allowed the tubes

to be changed easily [from looking online, it seems that there was also a specialised one that had a tray

for testing drinking water samples].

Helpfully, it has the operating voltage printed on it. Perhaps I should give it a try and see if it works.

RE: Radioactivity fun!

jw0752 — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 05:41:04 GMT

This is a great experiment and I enjoyed reading about it. I was wondering if you can give a little more background on how you measured the 68k events over a 38 hour period. When I was younger they were still doing atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. At the time I bought a Geiger counter so that I could see if I could detect a difference in the background radiation after the tests were performed. I also wanted to see if I could detect any change in the radiation levels in the rain or snow. I kept a pretty consistent log over several months but I never saw a measurable change. I still have the Geiger counter and it still works. For radiation sources I have harvested a little Americium from junk smoke detectors and I have the face of a 1940s watch that had florescent numbers that were laced with radium to make them glow in the dark. The watch face still has a fairly high rate even after 80 years though it no longer glows in the dark.

John