I wish these toys were available today. This one is not particularly dangerous (U-238 is barely radioactive), yet very educational and entertaining.
I try to perform some chemical and biological experiments with my daughter, however, it is much more interesting when you can do such things without adult supervision; and e.g. home CRISPR kits, while available, require precision and many difficult steps to achieve the results (there are no guarantees).
Reminds me of a friend mentioning his college friend talking about the micro biology lab procedures he had to do. Making a reagent using a 60 step process involving mixing colorless solutions to get another colorless solution. The dismay when you test the reagent and find it no workie.
> This one is not particularly dangerous (U-238 is barely radioactive)
No, and uranium ore isn't that concentrated either (they probably didn't use high grade stuff).
Though Zn-65, Rb-106, Po-210 and Pb-210 aren't as nice but the concentrations would probably have been negligible, otherwise I would stay away from those.
I remember cloud chamber experiments we did at a special laboratory when in high school and it was really nice to see the beta radiation being deflected by a magnetic field and curl up a bit.
Smoke detectors for one are the easiest and most affordable source of a of any alpha radiation (Am-241). Though most new ones are based on other methods.
Maybe if they were, fewer people would be afraid of science. And atomic energy.
When we were kids one of my cousins was signed up for some kind of science experiment of the month club. The first kit came with a microscope and all kinds of instruments. Then each month a box would arrive full of slides and rocks and all kinds of things with instructions for performing five or six different experiments.
Even as an adult, if such a thing existed I would subscribe to it today.
That seems like a good choice for some. It's sad, though, that for Thimble, and so many others, that "science"=electronics, when there is so much more to explore.
Well U238 is still a heavy metal and as such pretty poisonous. (As is the rest in the kit.) So most likely the samples are encased in glass, however one should be pretty certain that that glass does not get damaged.
I'd heartlessly hazard that weeding future nuclear engineers out who are unable to master reading "Do not consume" warnings is probably for the best...
To be fair, most products and practices in the 1950's would be considered wildly dangerous by today's standards. Hell, we were still using leaded gasoline (gasoline with
tetraethyllead additive) up until the 90's. Think about how dangerous lead poisoning is and now imagine that we used to add it to gasoline and every gas powered motor was spewing vaporized lead. Good times.
Yeah it's a problem because there is no money in light aviation and a lot of liabilities. And leaded aviation gas appears as a liability, especially to refineries.
There are increasing attempts to produce diesel aircraft engines. Complicated by there not being any money in light aviation.
Depends on how much of it they give you, on the flip side with a half-life of 244 days you'd better be using your kit soon after purchase, and better hope it didn't sit on the shelves long.
I have long been enamoured with the idea of building a series of educational science toy sets were in some way better than those I remember growing up. Seems like a nice pastime.
The '50s were a different time. When I was in third grade, I think it was 1959, I got to go to Mrs. Spencer's Workshop for part of each day. This was a special class where we could make up our own projects and do them.
I wanted to make a printed circuit board for a science fair project, and I wanted to etch it myself. I didn't have a source for a phenolic board with a copper layer, but I figured I could at least demonstrate the concept by masking both sides of a copper sheet with electrical tape as a resist.
So I asked Mrs. Spencer if she could get me a sheet of copper, some electrical tape, and a tank of nitric acid. And she did!
I masked the copper with the tape and dunked it in the nitric acid, and watched it dissolve the copper. Then rinsed off the copper, peeled off the tape, and glued the copper strips to a cutting board to make the circuit. (I figured the cutting board would satisfy the "board" part of "printed circuit board".)
~~Note that the article mentions Pb-210 not Po-210, ie. lead not polonium. Pb-210 was known as Radiolead.~~ (edit: it actually contains both)
Po-210 is deadly when ingested but not very dangerous when outside the body. It also has a very short half life, so you need it fresh out of a reactor if you are to poison a defected spy or a dissident with it.
If anyone else found this comment about poisoning defected spies oddly familiar, you might also be thinking of the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko[0], indeed using Po-210.
When I was kid you could buy pharao's serpents over the counter at joke shops in the UK.
This is a mercury compound that gives off mercury vapour when lit: "If the reaction is performed inside a container, a gray film of mercury coating on its inner surface can be observed"
The instructions told you to be in a well-ventilated place. Oh yeah. Helpful.
Replying to myself, the Pharao's Serpent isn't about gassing kids with metallic mercury vapour, that's just a bonus, but the peculiar growths it produces. It looks like a mashup of CGI and '70s stop-motion making a cheap Dr. Who monster. It's well worth seeing if you've not before.
I try to perform some chemical and biological experiments with my daughter, however, it is much more interesting when you can do such things without adult supervision; and e.g. home CRISPR kits, while available, require precision and many difficult steps to achieve the results (there are no guarantees).
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