Sammich Radiation

[xolo]

While I never gave the matter a great deal of thought, I always had this sort of background assumption that the Reuben sandwich probably came from New York, maybe 1880 to 1900 or so. Not even closeSo, I lit up the Russian geiger counter today, just because. It has a little audible warner that makes a high-pitched metallic *tink!* *tinktink!*

Comments

[mejeep]

Is the range something useful such as micro or millli-roentgen, unlike the USA Civil Defense dosimeters and units that were in roentgens! As in "if this needle moves AT ALL, you're toast!".

Radioactive decay is a lovely source of randomness, albeit very low bandwidth. Run it a LONG time before seeding a Random Number Generator.

[xolo]

Well, it's really just the tube/detector and charger outputting to an LED and speaker. "Geiger counter" perhaps glorifies it. There's a data jack, but no counter or measuring device connected. It's more a meditative aid/toy than anything to me, although I keep thinking I should build an interface to the laptop or tablet.

I've got this 1950s CD pocket dosimetre that's leaky/defective, so that I can charge it, and a few hours later it shows me having taken a big ol' cold warrior's dose of radiation.

[c_eagle]

So there's alpha, beta, gamma and X ... what are these "cosmic" ones....? :9

[xolo]

Cosmic radiation is a generic term for seriously high-energy particles and photons coming from space. I'm not sure the term is even in common use anymore. It used to be one of the hot topics of physics.