Cloud chambers are nobel prize winning devices that make otherwise invisible radiation visible and they're incredibly simple to build. For more radioactive products, check out our first expose: • Negative Ion/Anti-5g P...
Alpha rays huh? Can I ask something? Which of them are the worst to humans? alpharays (who are the ,,least resistant"), betarays ( who are like gamma but they don't pass aluminum) or gammarays
I would like to see how a smoke alarm is shielded vs unshielded Edit: 22k Likes and we haven't seen this yet :( I hope you're still up to doing this one.
@@derrekvanee4567 There are smoke detectors that use Americium and while they use a very tiny amount the type of radiation emitted is most certainly ionizing.
@@peterhaag9344 there was a boy that took radioactive materials from smoke detectors, gun sights, and lanterns. And used them to try and create a breeder reactor. While he ultimately failed (due to both him realizing the radiation it was giving off and being caught by the government). But he had already irradiated his home leading to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) classifying his mothers home as a Superfund hazardous materials site. And this was after his mother had actually three away most of the radioactive material through conventional garbage disposal. He was also arrested on the claim that he stole smoke detectors for rebuilding his reactor. To which he plead guilty. He was in the end be nicknamed the Nuclear Boy Scout and would die due to drug and alcohol complications.
@@Kino_Cartoonbro i saw your pfp and thought it was soyjak, look it up if you dont know what it is. I promise it looks just like your pfp from a distance 😂
@@420inmysystem69 fair enough it does look like it from afar XD. I drew this when I was like 14 and never changed it. It kinda makes me nostalgic when I'm being honest.
well, as usual there is some ambiguation. just as with light. besides that, with enough time / strength it can be generalized into waves-like. this would be done for e.g. exposure calculation.
@@lower47 more like a minigun that fires a large amount of rounds in random directions. Or I guess the fragmentation metaphor could work if you imagined the grenade going off countless times.
I always thought of radiation as sort of a constant thing emanating from radioactive objects, it's interesting how it's sort of just a bunch of particles piercing through space. So if you get hit with radiation, it's like a bunch of microscopic stab wounds.
Honestly there should just be a permanent livestream of one of these chambers, imagine just casually having this in the background and you suddenly see it light up with trails and it turns out you just witnessed some interesting event!
@@gazzat5 Cloudflare actually uses radioactive decay for some of their random numbers. It's also the best possible source of randomness, due to quantum mechanics. (They also use a camera for lava lamps / a triple pendulum at some of their other data centers)
Even better, those thin streaks are actually only alpha particles, but once in a while you might see a thick streak which is likely a beta plus or beta minus decay particle
I went to a science demonstration type thing as a little kid once and a guy did this for us. It's been like 18 years and I've never seen or heard about this procedure since, but I still think about it all the time. So cool to see it again
It is interesting how a banana still produces a few trails. Bananas are very, very slightly radioactive due to having trace amounts of Potassium 40 in them
And according to an experiment by explosions&fire ripe, dark spotted bananas have more potassium in them than green or yellow bananas. Don’t remember if he found that bananas turn something else into potassium as it ripens or if the potassium just migrates from the peel to the fruit, but it was pretty cool nevertheless!
That's why radioactive radiation is dangerous: it literally could penetrate/destroy cell membrane or even DNA of living being since it's so energetic. Indeed we're bombarded by radiation everyday. But the comparision to stand nearby radioactive materal is like being shot by semi-auto pistol to gatling gun.
Radiation is one of the most terrifying hazards known to man, you can't see it, smell it or taste it. It is known that during the Chernobyl disaster some victims experienced a phenomenon known as "radiation euphoria". It happens when someone is subjected to a large dose of radiation under a short amount of time. Some described it as feeling powerful and able to do anything, but it only lasted for a short amount of time before the symptoms of radiation sickness took its place.
@Czadzikable sure, it wasn't my intention to disrespect the memory of this great scientist. And it is indeed sad that even most people do not even know this fact. But for this kind of joke, created mostly for entertainment, it would've been a bit overloaded for me to use her full polish name because she is mostly known after the short version of her name, and it is pretty hard to read for an average english speaking person. So I guess it may be exceptional for the simplicity reasons of a joke ( which by itself shouldn't be taken to serious ) , to keep the things short and use more or less known name of this legendary scientist. Rest in peace, Marie Skłodowska Curie.
This is genuinely one of the coolest science demonstrations I've ever seen on youtube. Being able to actually see tiny radioactive particles making real, physical changes on their environment is just incredible
Same i was always curious about why radioactive materials are so dangerous, it sounded like magic to me. And as I haven't received any science education just reading why or the actual explanation didn't say much to me. As you said it's so cool seeing here the particles being shoot and i can picture them going through a body like tiny bullets messing up it's particle structure, genetic material or whatever.
Lool, dude, i've seen your comment fired under some YTshort just yesterday and now you're here, the comment was ~2 yrs ago and it was about some school project where you had to do smth probably, it reall stuck with me for a moment and then i found you in the comment section, what a coincidence...
I know that this happens but actually seeing it is very sobering. If all radioactive substances were like this people would be much more careful with things.
This completely changed the mental model I'd built in my head about radiation! I knew radiation is individual particles, but I assumed there would be thousands and thousands at all times, like rays of light from a flashlight.
What you're seeing here is Alpha radiation, literally ionised helium atoms being spewed out. Unfortunately, a cloud chamber can't be used to show X-rays or Gamma radiation, which, now that I think about it is probably for the best.
@@clarkortega1722 A Geiger counter can be used to detect alpha and beta particles as well as gamma radiation, whereas a cloud chamber reveals the presence of alpha and beta radiation, as well as protons and even muons, but it doesn't work for gamma or X-rays.
A Geiger counter clicks when it gets hit with a particle. We are a lot better dealing with periodic information from our auditory system than our visual system. If every click is one particle, a click rate that sounds like white noise is deadly, while a rate that sounds like a broken metronome is safe. You can think of each click as a small possibility that a single cell turned cancerous. Obviously, those possibilities add up over time.
same here, i always imagined it behaved like a gas. so i was expecting something similar to that video of what farts look like through a thermal camera.
@@Crooked.crookedidrk abt this but im assuming the yellow pigment used at the time had smth radioactive in it and then it got turned into paint used on the gnome making it very radioactive
You don't need an advanced physics lab, I remember a science hobby book from the '60s that you could make one of these Cloud Chambers at home with a jar and some Water Ice to create a supersaturated cloud and then you would fire particles from a radium dial watch into it. So just go to the library and look for old science hobby books for kids.
@@nfrl-hs2ly oh for sure, I just meant the class was Advanced Physics Lab. It's a pretty simple piece of equipment, thanks for the pointers on where to find instructions, but I still think it would've been a useful classroom exhibit
@@Omega_Orion Same, Think conducting this types of experiments within a safe-environment filled with like-minded people is far better than doing a DIY by yourself.
Potassium has a radioactive Isotope, which is the source of 40% of the annual natural radiation emissions a human body has to deal with, as it is inside the human bones for example.
@@letsomethingshine One, I'm 99% sure diamond does not decay. Two, if it did, it would not create graphite whatsoever, as that is still carbon just like the diamond, and radioactive decay only creates elements of a lower atomic number.
@@MrSailing101 diamond was more recently discovered to decay. Carbon dust was found around diamond exhibits and after measuring the dust weight vs the diamond weight it was discovered to be the lost mass of the diamond. This was tested globally and has been confirmed.
The reason the banana had trails is because part of the storing process done by most if not all grocery stores is irradiation, it aint gonna kill you and it doesnt use enough radiation to make it radioactive but it uses some
Also fun fact, the time between decays and the direction of the resulting radiation particle (alpha or beta) are completely and utterly random. You could use the decays from that video clip as a seed for an encryption system and it could not be recreated.
Depends on the material. Certain elements can be predicted when they decay, which is known as a half-life. A material with a half-life of (X) will decay either at that point or beforehand.
@@jesusofbullets ‘at that point or beforehand’ tells us that it is in fact random, your argument is flawed. There is uncertainty of the exact moment when alpha/beta decays will occur. Half-life is not a calculation which you can use in order to figure out exactly when a radioactive particle will decay. Half-life is an estimation of the time it will take for one half of the starting material to decay i.e the time it takes for radioactivity to half in measure. Although half-lives for differing elements have been defined the exact rate of decay is completely random. It is impossible to know with absolute certainty when a nucleus will decay.
Looked more like otherwise invisible sparks to me. (but there are different types of radiation, I would expect alpha and beta radiation to emit particles, but gamma radiation to be just glowing "invisible" light).
That is a fantastic observation. What you said reminds me of how I was listening to a man talk about how a ketogenic diet can cure some cases of epilepsy. He has a theory that in biblical times when people would pray and fast from eating, maybe epileptics would have relief from their condition but it would seem as if their conditions were coming from a demonic spirit.
Throw a bit of Fiestaware in there if you can find it. Alternatively, old watches who's hands were painted with Radium paint. They should provide a heck of a show.
"We worked this out in high school; if you ate 40 thousand bananas in ten minutes, you would die of radioactive poisoning." "Ah yes, THE RADIATION would kill you."
Not even true. This radiation is totally safe for humans, it's not Gamma or X-ray that've been proven to affect our health. Just some atoms that break randomly into subatomic particles. This people will tell you your phone is killing you or some shit.
If you have an old living relative ask them if you can borrow an old porcelain bowl or plate and put it in there I heard older plates, bowls, and just older stuff from the 1900's usually has some level of radiation
@@rainbowbunchie8237 since radiation can be super dangerous, I'd sooner call them careful than paranoid. If you don't know much about radiation and find out you have radioactive stuff, it is safer to remove those items from your house instead of just shrugging and leaving it. If you don't/can't inform yourself on it, better not mess with it.
Cloud chambers are one of the things that got me into physics in the first place, just fascinating how something so simple can allow us to see the atomic world
I don't think they have fast enough cameras for it. One of the fastest things thyev ever filmed is the progression of cracks in glass which happens around 4,500 m/a. The slowest form radiation, alpha radiation, already moves at around 20,000 m/s. Then there is beta radiation and EM radiation (e.g. gamma and x-rays) which can be moving pretty damn close to the vacuum speed of light and we just can't film that reaction in this context. If anything the litter is likely the speed of condensation, with the radiation having long since passed through the vapour before it actually condenses and displays the particle's path.
Radiation moves at the speed of light so with their current equipment they would not be able to film it. They could possibly film it's interaction with the matter in the cloud chamber as that wouldn't react at the speed of light but hopefully wouldn't be too fast
@@pookee0064 gamma moves at the speed of light. Beta and alpha move WAY slower than the speed of light. Sill rediculously fast. Note you can film light with the trick of sampling. The caveat is it needs to be repeating.
its incredibly interesting to see tangible things like this to complete your understanding of that particular thing. it brings it all into perspective since many scientific text just kinda lays it out as a theory. it brings the words into context when experiments like these are done
Yeah, this is so annoying because I see many shorts that I’d like to watch again or save to a specific playlist. For a big profiting company like RU-vid, they suck way too much.
On mobile, on the "library" tab on the right, in the "recent" list at the top, shorts will show up as normal videos. You can directly add them to playlists or just tap them to view them as a normal video. On web you have to change the URL.
I have been very interested in chernobyl's disaster lately and this video blew my mind. The worst thing for all the people who had to leave and who had to perform all these cleaning tasks was that they couldn't see the thing they were being warned against
Alpha and beta, but not gamma. BUT if gamma undergoes pair production, then you'll see the beta particles that come out as a pair that shoot out 180 degrees from each other
@@thethoughtemporium What pattern does that actually produce in the chamber? Because depending on how fast they carry on moving in the same direction there should be different angles to the resulting lines, i'd think.
