duffahtolla
Newly Enlightened
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2002
- Messages
- 104
I was wondering if any CPF'er knew enough about low level radiation to tell me if my hairbrained, mad scientist idea would work.
Get a low level (Alpha or Beta) radiation source and embed it into a resin based scintilator. Scintilators react to radioactivity by converting the particle strikes into UV.
If a glow powder were mixed into the resin, would there be enough secondary light to register with the human eye?
Alpha wouldn't penetrate the resin more than a mm, so any effect it had would look like it was on the surface of the specimen. Beta would penetrate a bit, (I'm thinking a few cm) but the whole thing could be cast in a lead crystal box to begin with. Any residual gama would hopefully be toned down by the lead crystal sides.
Dangerous? yep..
Insane? Maybe..
Cool! Definitely..
Possible? You tell me.
I know this will work. My problem I don't know what cpm I'll need to make it visible. I seen small specimens with 25,000 cpm (mostly Beta) that looked ideal, but I don't know how many UV photons a scintilator releases per strike or how many photons the glow powder releases per UV photon.
I got the idea from my mickey mouse fantasia snow globe. It has the comet lit by an LED.
ps. Anybody know how to convert lumens into photons?
Get a low level (Alpha or Beta) radiation source and embed it into a resin based scintilator. Scintilators react to radioactivity by converting the particle strikes into UV.
If a glow powder were mixed into the resin, would there be enough secondary light to register with the human eye?
Alpha wouldn't penetrate the resin more than a mm, so any effect it had would look like it was on the surface of the specimen. Beta would penetrate a bit, (I'm thinking a few cm) but the whole thing could be cast in a lead crystal box to begin with. Any residual gama would hopefully be toned down by the lead crystal sides.
Dangerous? yep..
Insane? Maybe..
Cool! Definitely..
Possible? You tell me.
I know this will work. My problem I don't know what cpm I'll need to make it visible. I seen small specimens with 25,000 cpm (mostly Beta) that looked ideal, but I don't know how many UV photons a scintilator releases per strike or how many photons the glow powder releases per UV photon.
I got the idea from my mickey mouse fantasia snow globe. It has the comet lit by an LED.
ps. Anybody know how to convert lumens into photons?
