#geiger.

[maertyrer]

Willi Geiger Sankt Sebastian

Oil on canvas, 122 x 100 cm, 1914

[deviika]

Albert Geiger

[thehauntedrocket]

Alien

Art by Paolo Rivera

[reddpenn]

I got a Geiger counter!

Let’s look through my collection for some Spicy Rocks!  I’ve never deliberately collected radioactive specimens, so I have no idea what I’m going to find.

First, though, let’s test the baseline level of radiation in my house.

It’s fun to hear the Geiger counter click as it detects radiation.  20 counts per minute.  Nice!  You’re unlikely to ever see a count of zero, as pretty much everything in the world, including the human body, gives off a little bit of radiation. 

20 is a normal baseline, nothing to be concerned about.  Standing in my house, I’m getting a radiation dose of about 0.00013 milliseieverts per hour - or a little over one mSv a year.  This is an average yearly dosage of radiation for people in my country, and is something my body can easily process.  For context, a dosage of 100 mSv would slightly increase my risk of cancer, and a dosage of 1000 mSv would immediately give me radiation sickness.

But enough about these boring, safe amounts of radiation.  I want to see some spice!  Let’s check over by the Rock Wall!

Hm, I’d expected the CPM to be noticeably higher around my rock collection, but I’m getting nothing!  Even testing each individual rock, nothing’s more than a few ticks above the baseline.  So far, my fancy new toy is looking like wasted money.  :c

WAIT!  THERE!!  62 CPM!  That’s three times higher than the base reading in the rest of my house!!!  YESSS!!  THIS ROCK IS SPICY!!!!

Here’s the rock that’s setting off my Geiger counter.  (Yes I’m touching the spicy rock with my bare hands, don’t worry about it.) 

This fossil, which is as big as my head, is part of the femur bone of a Megalonyx, a North American giant ground sloth!

These huge animals could grow as big as ten feet tall.  They lived alongside humans during the last ice age, and it’s theorized that humans may have hunted them to extinction.  This particular fossil was found in a phosphate mine!

Why is it radioactive?  Because... sometimes fossils are just radioactive!  They spend a lot of time in the ground, which is full of radioactive minerals, and often radiation just gets all up in there.  There are some fossils on display in museums which are so radioactive that they have to be coated with lead paint for the safety of curators and museum-goers!  Compared to those, this femur bone is barely radioactive at all.

So is it really safe for me to have this in my house, much less handle it with my bare hands?  Well, yeah!  Remember, despite having this spicy rock in my collection, the radiation baseline in my house is completely normal.  Here’s why.

Even just a few centimeters away from this specimen, the Geiger counter’s reading is halved.  A few inches away, and it can’t detect any radiation at all.  It basically has to be directly touching the rock to get an abnormal reading.  Which means I also have to be touching the rock to receive a meaningful amount of radiation exposure.

But even holding this rock in my hands, I’m only getting a dosage of about 0.0004 mSv per hour.  If I never let go of this rock for an entire year, I would get a dose of about 3.5 mSv.  Which is... still completely within the safe threshold for my body to process.  Nothing to worry about!

Man, I gotta start collecting some spicier rocks.

[shiftythrifting]

A "garden item", some uranium buttons and uranium glass from some antique stores in Regina.

[energysoda]

why are geiger counters so cute. they are like little animals to me. making cute little noises when they detect radiation.

[minhamemoriasuja]

Sam Stryker photographed by J J Geiger

[sictransitgloriamvndi]

[textsearchbradleycarlgeigerbrad]

TEXT SEARCH BRADLEY CARL GEIGER AND BRAD GEIGER AND EVERYTHING ASSOCIATED

BRAD GEIGER AND CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

BRADLEY CARL GEIGER AND CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

BRAD GEIGER AND WIKIPEDIA

BRADLEY CARL GEIGER AND WIKIPEDIA

[draconic-hazard]

Look at those faces. They definetly stole cars together as teens

[redswaberkez]

ядерное гетто

[dwrdrwd]

[antoniettabrandeisova]

Weeping Woman, Nikolaus Geiger (German, 1849–1897) Sculpture at the Old St. Matthew's Church Cemetery in Berlin, Germany

[geddoart]

Dubious creature

I really liked Romulus

[thewindowofthesummerhouse]

Gary Frank

[lynnemariehedvig]

TECHNOLOGIES

United States of America