If you haven't experienced a spinthariscope, I can highly recommend it. I bought one as a Christmas present for a buddy and we both enjoy its demonstration of radioactivity.
Chicago Peel 1 accomplished fission of fruit flies, which we felt was promising.
The subsequent banana nuclear bomb tests have been an unmitigated disaster. There are so many damn bananas in and around the bikini atolls, just nothing. Not even a fizzle. Mojave is littered with peels. Oppenheimer slipped on a peel and broke his leg.
Rumors are the Soviets are using avocados. Maybe that is the key. We are now constructing a demon core from an avocado split lengthwise.
Don't miss a chance to see the Cherenkov radiation effect at your local research reactor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation
If you haven't experienced a spinthariscope, I can highly recommend it. I bought one as a Christmas present for a buddy and we both enjoy its demonstration of radioactivity.
You won't make one at home, but cloud chambers[^1] reveal individual alpha particle tracks.
There's one in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris — blew my mind!
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_chamber
Edit: turns out people make these at home all the time. Sick!
You can easily make them at home (source, I did last weekend!).
- Dry ice (mine came from something shipped cold)
- Dark piece of metal (I used a 3D printer hot bed) on top of dry ice to get cold
- IPA vapour (I poured some on a shop towel)
- Some transparent container to house it all - I found a glass display cube on the side of the road, fish tanks or Tupperware also work.
- Torch or something to provide side lighting
Very cool to see evidence of the particles zooming around us, can highly recommend.
This can be done at home with a little effort. Less effort if you can get dry ice easily.
https://hackaday.com/2019/01/13/see-the-radioactive-world-wi...
Well, google for "DIY cloud chamber" did result in quite some entries. Apart from youtube channels, with the first entry a guide from CERN:
https://home.cern/news/news/experiments/how-make-your-own-cl...
I tried the same with bananas. Got nothing.
Bananas are like XML that way. If you're not getting the results you want, you're just not using enough of them.
Potassium-40 is not an alpha emitter.
Maybe he used banana as the scintillator.
That's unrelated. He's been diligently substituting bananas in many experiments to mostly disappointment.
The banhattan project has been a fiasco.
Chicago Peel 1 accomplished fission of fruit flies, which we felt was promising.
The subsequent banana nuclear bomb tests have been an unmitigated disaster. There are so many damn bananas in and around the bikini atolls, just nothing. Not even a fizzle. Mojave is littered with peels. Oppenheimer slipped on a peel and broke his leg.
Rumors are the Soviets are using avocados. Maybe that is the key. We are now constructing a demon core from an avocado split lengthwise.
...but occasional delight.