damn it. exported the final in highest quality, which took hours. but scintillations were still visible. now, though, with the compression youtube applied... hardly visible. if you view in fullscreen and know what you are looking for exactly, you can still see them... but you have to KNOW what to look for. :( sorry if this video is not as good as it was supposed to be, but that's all i can do until i have access to a proper image intensifier. hope this video was still of interest to you guys!
bionerd23 your videos have been an inspiration, and help me keep motivated in pursuing a degree in physics. I was curious if you could let me know the difficulty for foreigners to tour the exclusion zone? I was hoping to be able to visit before going for my pHd.
That's awesome! I wish I wasn't as old back then in school. I collect radioactive sources, and I try to find the hottest sources I can find! I have almost a mini-museum now!
My favorite luminescence effect is still putting on a sweater in the dark when it's very cold with low humidity, and watching all the electrostatic sparks inside. :D
9 years ago, wow My favorites are Triboluminescence and Chemiluminescence Triboluminescence gives off quartz dust though, which you can't breathe in, so not as good
I'm really glad you made a video on radioluminescence! ^__^ Thank you. Also I tried the sugar cube experiment and it was amazing. Keep up the great work.
When I was a boy in the early 1970's one of the cold breakfast cereals had a toy scintillation scope in the box. A small magnifier and a dot of radioactive and phosphor at the end of a tube. It was fascinating watching the patterns that evolved. Like watching the waves on the sea. b.
Merry Christmas and a safe happy new year, thank you for all your videos. And the trouble you went through to make them. Very much appreciated, all the very best from here in bonny Scotland.
What a fascinating video. I have never seen so powerful beta sources. What a marvelous site. Thank you bionerd23 for the video, I wish I could put 100 likes to this master edit of super emitting sources........
You can get the effect by opening a self seal envelope in the dark, i have noticed the blue sparks before, but never knew what they were until this video, Thanks bionerd23.
at MY w... oh wait. name change, right? ah. it's YOU. *glados voice*. but yeah this is a good approach, just find one of those watches at a flea market, then look at it with a microscope (or magnifying glass)... way better than any camera can record.
aserta hmm, they are so short, that's rather hard to do... i'll look into it. aw man, i just want an image intensifier. i'll also think about how to get one of those. i'd just buy it on credit card and return it within the 14 days full refund period, lol, but i dont even have that much allowance on my credit card (the things are like 10k dollars). so yeah, i'll find another way.
I think I can see them too at 1080p full screen, 1:20m - 1:38m. There are fast tiny flashes in the hands of the watch which are much much smaller and move faster than the compression artefacts that I can see in the face of the watch.
bionerd23 I would see if you could borrows someone's fancy Canon DSLR with Magic Lantern on it that can film 14-bit RAW video at high resolution. So you'll get both excellent dynamic range plus less noise from the large sensor. You could also try uploading to vimeo.com which has much friendlier compression levels.
Cool! Have you considerd upping the contrast? I mean, not just a little bit but like crazy. Maybe even a threshold-ish like filter. The "Background" glow could probably be made quite dim and the flashes should show up much more clearly! :)
i tried that in my video editing software (adobe premiere pro) but did not find it to really increase the visibility of the scintillations. maybe with applied youtube compression, it would have, but, oh well...
Try striking the old, tired radium paint with longwave UV light. It will jumpstart the lume for a brief period. You also can see radium scintillation by constructing a simple spinthariscope (alphascope, radioscope). Take a piece of CLEAR Scotch tape and coat the sticky side with copper-activated zinc sulfide powder (non-activated won't work) leaving the thinnest film the adhesive will self-hold. Hold the sticky side of the tape about one-half inch from your Radium source and the scintillations on the tape's opposite side will be easy to both visualize and video. On a side note I've never been able to see scintillations on a Tritium tube, figuring that the phosphor coating on the glass inner side was too thick.
I just found out my grandfathers old compass was radium yesterday. I had it in a droor before that , almost a year. I am trying to find a box or bag for it now. it's a wrist compass.
have had tritium keyrings for about 15 years, handy when you drop your keys in the dark! Shame youtube loses the quality. Incidentally i just extracted the vial out of my current keyring and tested on my GMC-300 counter, i see about 55-60CPM with it right up against the geiger tube, background is about 25-30CPM. The keyring was about 6 years old.
yeah, totally sufficient for the human eye - however, they only contain around some 500 MBq of H-3, which makes it near impossible to see scintillations with a camera... i've tried that before.
my father was a watchmaker. I remember playing with the GLOW in the dark clocks. What is it about holding the dial near a light source and then returning to darkness causing the dial face to become brighter ? thank you
Surprised that the radium timepiece still fluoresces because of age. The Radium of course is as active as ever, but in every example I've seen for years the activated zinc sulfide lume has deteriorated to the point that nothing glows.
My radium-226 deck markers work great! However, they're quite hot! >1 mSv/h (gamma only, and maybe some very hard beta too, i.e. from bismuth-214), and I don't like putting them close to my eyes for too long, which I've done, even though it's behind sealed Plexiglas. I don't want cataracts early in my life. Up close, you can see SO MANY individual scintillations! At a distance, it looks like green glowing "heat waves" or green "hot coals", due to the chaotic randomness of the scintillations as it decays!
That’s awesome you have some Ra-226 luminous deck markers. I observe the Scintillations and compare them Akin to TV Static. On the 1960’s Westclox Baby Bens you can See the Glowing Hands and dial in the dark with well adjusted eyes and pitch blackness. If you want them to glow I suggest a 395nm UV light or a compact / Fluorescent CFL Blacklight. It’s very stunning to see.
Very interesting information! Just tried both tricks you desribed - scintilations on camera close-up with tritium trinket, and 2nd, with sugar. I don't have cubes of sugar, so I just put some crumbly sugar into cup and crush it with spoon. In the full darkness I was able to observe small splashes of light. But the question to you - you told they should be blue, but I observed they are pretty white, maybe with little greenish color. Is it because of lack of color vision in the dark, or some properties of my sugar?
i've only heard of blue light being emitted by sugar; "white" would mean that all kinds of different wavelengths are emitted to mix "white", as white is not a color, but rather "all colors together" (in additive mixing, e.g. with sunlight -> appears "white", but is a spectrum of "all colors", which you can see as raindrops split the spectrum up into a rainbow). so i'd assume it's the optical system you are using (your eyes) that are responsible for this effect. :P this phenomenon is dependent on the distance of the electron shells in a molecule / atom, as the difference of energy between excited state electron shells and ground state electrons is emitted as light, and those are usually very characteristic, so there are just a few potential energies / possible energy transitions that are possible for each molecule / atom. so "white", a great variation of energy differences, is pretty much impossible for a simple molecule like sugars.
Hi. You mention regarding the radium 226 being too dangerous to handle on the video (given the amount contained in the clock) but on previous videos you handled a ww2 radium luminised dial face which was un shielded ? To help me better understand can you explain how it was safe to handle that instrument vs the clock in the radio luminescent video ? Is the risk based around particle inhalation ?........... Love your videos btw.
the difference is that in order for my camera to see it without an additional image intensifier, i would need the radioactivity of at worst onehundredthousand (not sure what the actual activity in uCi within that instrument was, or i could be more precise) of these radium warbird altimeters concentrated in one single spot. i'd need a lot more activity. that would mean the dose rate would no longer be 1 mSv/h on contact, but 100 Sv/h on contact - and even if you apply the inverse square law, still not good to be around with without any shielding. unrelated, but also, i could not use the altimeter as-is, as it no longer glows / scintillates... that is because these instruments had to be much more bright than a watch for a civil person, so they contained much more radium already - and thus, by now, the crystal structure of the ZnS has been wrecked by the sheer amount of radiation, so it no longer scintillates sufficiently. so i'd need the proper amount of radium, then mix that freshly with ZnS (or at best activated ZnS).
Thank you for your reply, I had to exchange a dial face on a war time gauge it was only later that I realized it had been radium coated....scary stuff ! the clean up was interesting !!!! I sent swabs away taken from the inside of the glass which confirmed the presence of RA226 @ 30cps above background on a scintillation counter. I used a UV lamp on a similar sealed gauge and it glowed as well as the day it was made...however, I noticed that the radium had discoloured the paint and had turned it brown rather than white... it was through this that I became interested in learning more and how I came to follow your video's.
bionerd23 Can you exite the Tritium into more Beta Decay with winding a copper coil around this Tritium light and pulse the copper coil with RF bursts or spikes from a pulse generator ? That would be an interesting experiment to do ! Where can one buy such a Tritium light and how much are they ? Can one extract the radioactive Tritium by sawing open the glas container to coat coper coils with it ? Many thanks. Regards, Stefan.
I've heard many people saying that betalight emits secondary low energy gamma photons as result of the interaction between beta particles and the glass vials (Bremstrahlung). So I've decided to investigate with a gamma probe but I wasn't able to pick-up anything (maybe my probe is not sensitive to LEG). What is your opinion?
bremsstrahlung does occur to a low extent, as low density materials actually create very few bremsstrahlung from betas. this is why plastic is used to shield beta emitters; lead would create a large amount of photons (x-rays), so shielding a beta source with lead would actually make your radiation exposure WORSE than having no shield (if the lead is insufficiently thick to shield the major amount of created x-rays again, at least). x-ray tubes use this concept; tungsten, which is more dense than lead (and has a higher melting point), serves as a target for high energy betas (here: electrons from "electricity" out of a power socket) to create very penetrating photons. bremsstrahlung occurs when an electron - which is what beta-minus radiation is - gets deflected around the core of an atom. you can image this like an asteroid passing by a planet - the planet's gravitational field changes the flight path of the asteroid. as is fundamental in physics, energy is never lost, but can only be converted to another form - so if you apply a force to change the flight path and slow an electron down, the energy difference is given off as a photon. this x-ray photon has a maximum energy of the beta particle's total kinetic energy; if the particle passes close to the nucleus of an atom, its energy may be fully converted into a photon, and the electron disappears. in less dense materials, it's more likely to be a process of many steps of energy release from multiple "flybys", which only creates very low energy photons that are absorbed around the area of their creation. the heavier the atoms and the closer they are together (higher density), the more likely an electron is to lose a lot of energy at once, creating an x-ray of significant energy. for H-3, the mean beta energy is 6 keV, while the maximum energy is 18 keV. thus, the maximum x-ray photon energy you could pick up would be 18 keV photons, which is a very low energy - and might explain why you can't measure anything with a gamma probe. most gamma only probes work from 40 or even 60 keV upwards only, as lower energy photons are absorbed within the tube's shielding before interacting with the gas to cause an impulse. so yeah, bremsstrahlung x-rays are created from H-3, same as some of the beta particles may randomly "be lucky" and manage to escape all nuclei in their way and thus, escape the tube. =)
bionerd23 many thanks for your comments, your explanations are always such clear and concise.. :) based on your advices, the readings picked up by the Inspector pancake are actually low energy gamma and not beta particles, am I right?
i'm pretty sure i remember having watches like that. it must be why night vision of watches has become tiny light a person manually flashes to see time?
I've not tried to look for scintillations -- this is the first I've heard of this. A black light makes old watch hands glow again even in a lit room. Will this cause more scintillations as well? I'll try the microscope when I get a chance. Thanks.
that's fluorescence / phosphorescence, so technically scintillations as well, same as from those e.g. "glow in the dark" stickers. however, they seem to be quite faint in contrast to a seriously high activity radioactive source (the tritium has a few hundred billion decays / beta particles per second). also, with fluorescence (immediate emission of light - you move away the UV source, the glow quickly fades; instead of taking hours to fade, which would be the case in phosphorescence), the problem is that your eyes will have a hard time catching those brief scintillations. if you continuously shine UV on the e.g. watch hands while looking, your eyes will not be properly dark adapted and you wont see anything (or at least i wont, but i have bad vision at night in general).
bionerd23 I learned something new about my grandfathers watch. The hands have phosphorescent paint that glows after shining a black light, or any other light for that matter on them, but they don't contain radium. The tiny dots of paint on the hour markers are what contain the radium, (which I detected with a borrowed Gc many years ago), and they still glow faintly even though the watch is 60 yo. After getting dark adapted, I did indeed see the scintillations that your describing. I didn't see any bright flashes, It looked more like the hour markers were twinkling like stars. The best way to see the affect was to hold the watch right up against my eye and not worry about trying to focus. What was it you said about radium being highly radioactive? Oh well, I won't be making a habit out of doing this -- it was cool!
Tritium is very cool stuff, I do goldsmithing as a hobby and I make rings and jewelry out of them all the time. Along with other things like radium hands and uranium minerals ;) I love the reactions I get from people when they ask why my rings glow and find out they are radioactive.
Cool vid! Please since youre good in science one question. If the Earth is round why does people on the other side of the globe don't fall in space? For example here in Texas i stand with my legs on the ground, head up. Ok. So how goes it people in Africas and Iraki don't fall to space.
Great video. I have a number of tritium light sources and a night vision scope but as I am in Australia its a little far away to loan you. I am going to wait till dark and see what one of these units looks like but I suspect it will be too bright close up. if I see anything of note I will try to put my video camera on the eye piece of the scope but that sound a little dodgy and focus I expect will be an issue but I will report on flashes etc if I see any. The scope is mono coloured in white its an image intensifier not a CCTV type unit - Gen 2 I think. Interesting to note your comments on the activity of tritium. I have no intention of opening any of them even more so now. The safety note they come with suggests get out of the room for a bit and then dispose of the remains in the normal rubbish I guess the tritium will all have gone up into the atmosphere assuming good ventilation.
So I am confused. People wore Radium watches for years. How is it they did not succumb to radiation sickness? I know the watch painters did but they ingested it. Oh and wint-o-green lifesavers and certs spark when you chew them in the dark. In the case of those piezoelectric current from distorting sugar crystals makes the wintergreen fluoresce.
I did something at night once i ot some friends we walked for a bout an hour and our eyes had adjusted to the light. We took a certain type of mint flavored life savers and chewed them and it looked like our mouths had sparks every time we bit down.
Correct, H3 beta radiation when stopped by the container walls are emitting bremsstrahlung radiation in the form of low energy x-ray (18 keV max), quite hard to detect but real and sometime used for scientific measurment.
a little bit of both. bremsstrahlung is not created to a large extent due to the low density of the shielding material, which is ideal for betas - but some bremsstrahlung is created, still. same as some of the beta radiation has higher energies and can penetrate the shielding in some random cases; the mean beta energy is some 6 keV for H-3, but the maximum beta energy is 18 keV or so. i dont know the emission probabilities off hand, but you get the idea. =)
bionerd23 I've been tempted to get a tritium key chain, but I've wanted to know how much I'd be irradiating my balls with all day long. Most of the key chains I've seen have tubes much smaller than what you have there. How many Bq does it contain? What are its dimensions? Where can I get one? :D Assuming the Bq doesn't exceed the 10^9 Bq regulatory limit here.
Mark Rose well, not that i want to advertise a specific company, but one manufacturer calls them NITE GLOWRINGS. in some countries, FISHING STORES sell tritium as "everlasting bite indicator for at night"... sure, it glows for decades, as opposed to chemical glowsticks. :P
Hey, was that you at 8:32 in Veritasium's video? ( ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TRL7o2kPqw0.html ) Also, nice, I didn't know you could see the individual scintillations with the naked eye!
yeah, i had the honor to meet him and participate in the project he mentions in the description by guiding him through the exclusion zone of chernobyl. it was awesome to meet him - with professionals, you sometimes get disappointed in real life, as they are actors / performers and totally different in real life. not Derek, though - he is actually like he is in his videos. we joked around and had a ton of laughs about physics related stuff and other throughout each day of the shoot, it was marvelous. =)
bionerd23 To be honest, I'm not really a great fan of his videos. He seems sometimes a bit sloppy on the science and facts. As you said, he is an actor, not a scientist. But I'm glad you had so much fun!
James Schrumm you just said "this material", and as the video is mainly about tritium, i figured you meant H-3. :P Ra-226++ (in equilibrium with daughters) will penetrate wood as well as plastic, it's very hard radiation. as a general rule of thumb, the thicker / more dense the shield, the more shielding it will do (however, have to consider bremsstrahlung with betas, please refer to wikipedia etc. if you need more info).
Thank you your info has been very important to me. I wish I had some funds for you to continue on with your research. Keep up the good work and be safe.
Inside the glass, they produce x-rays with the same energy as a CRT monitor. They are stopped by a few centimeters of air, or 1.4 mm of skin. As an escaped gas, they combine with molecular oxygen to create tritiated water, which can be absorbed through the lungs. The biological half-life is on average 14 days, depending on how much you pee, breathe, and sweat. Thus, the treatment for tritium ingestion is to consume water and mineral salts. As a light source in a watch, it can be considered fully shielded.
