Testing radioactive Chernobyl blueberries

[@PyrotechnicalScience]

Thank you to my patreon supporters! Andrew Conner Toasteris Matt

[@The-One-and-Only100]

Talking about calibration for low and high energies I got my radiacode 102 to be on the nose for americium 241 and on the nose for thalium 208 and bismuth 214 (only on Android so I don't know about the ios app)

[@Dazdigo]

Home Depot is still selling ionizing smoke detectors. You will have to pay $6 but you wouldn't have to worry about customs seizing your $3 ionizing chamber from China.

[@hoggif]

That is cool. Fluerescent x-ray spectrography at pocket size. Never thought of using the device like that. I've used my older Radiacode-101 only for gamma spectrometry. Mine seems to be better calibrated than the one you have, I have a very clear (but weak) Cs-137 peak at the background like most of europe with not much error. (I've not recalibrated it). I've also found probably a lot of radon with it in one basement, had about 0.7uSv/h and clear daughters. (Radon as an alpha emitter is not of course detected directly) some other occational findings in my normal environment, mostly due to uranium in granite or similar.

[@The-One-and-Only100]

I tried it but failed since I had the beam of americium go through a silver coin straight to the detector but after my current experiment I will try it again the right way

[@hoggif]

@@The-One-and-Only100 I think this video had a great example how to set it up:n not through but rather more like you'd set up a mirror with light. You don't want beam going through metal, especially if low energy photons are to be detected. (Silver as a heavy metal will absorb too much). With through measurement you'd also contaminate it much with bremsstrahlung that I think is more directional while there is much less back scattering. I used to do xray analysis of minerals as a summer job way back and it was always about surface layer. For powdered samples we used paraffin wax holders to keep spurious emissions out (C & H don't emit detectable spurious signals or at least did not for that measurement device).

[@youtubeuser6067]

Excellent product and video!! Keep up the good work.👊🏻

[@eurokid83]

Just purchased a 103 it will arrive in a week or so. Can’t wait to play with it! Got a sample of trinitite I wanna analyze.

[@derchromebacher4366]

Man I was so disappointed when the cicadas (??? idk, I'm no etymologist) stopped with the intro. Thanks for bringing them back in the end!😍 The "should this be radioactive? Anyway..." attitude is what I'm here for, great video and cool tool.

[@Tyresio12]

Well, you're no entomologist either.

[@Neptunium]

the XRF spectroscopy is really stretching it ! but this is fun! glad you like it too! Hey nice work !

[@PyrotechnicalScience]

Hey love your videos! I definitely want to build a full scale PMT CsI detector and do some actual XRF spec but was genuinely surprised that the radiacode was capable of picking up XRF at all!

[@Neptunium]

@@PyrotechnicalScience it really is a neat little device ! RC is constantly improving it !

[@andrewhamop6665]

DUDE!! I was not expecting you to demonstrate XRF at the end there! I've been wanting to get a Radiacode 103 for a while now, and your video makes me wonder if I should get the 103G instead, since the GAGG scintillator would prove much more accurate for this low energy XRF stuff. I don't know why I never thought you could do XRF with these scintillation counters, but it just never occurred to me. Super cool!!

[@Dazdigo]

I got the radiacode 103 and the FS5000 geiger counter. I prefer the radiacode when searching for radioactive pieces since it is a lot faster at detecting the item. The downside of the radiacode is that it only detects gamma, when the radiacode is reporting 2 uSv/h, my geiger is reporting 50 uSv/h so uranium really gives off a lot of beta radiation.

[@justinbanks2380]

Very cool! I want a reason to get this! 😂 Also, first time I've ever heard that the android app is better or has more features than the iPhone. Love it

[@FullModernAlchemist]

This is awesome! Well done! Makes me want to revisit this because I considered doing this a long time ago before I had a spectrometer. Though I was going to use an X-ray machine lol the americium was a clever hack!

[@DonnyHooterHoot]

I have a Cesium137 sample disc. My Radiacode 103 loves it!

[@DonnyHooterHoot]

Also thorium infused tungsten welding rods are fun and cheap.

[@DonnyHooterHoot]

Am-241 from a smoke detector, who doesn't have that. It really buzzes the ol' 103!

[@morgan0]

radiacode is really cool, it's been something i've wanted for a while, when i have the money to get one

[@justinbanks2380]

How does one get blueberries from Chernobyl? Also, why would someone collect, and sell said berries? So many questions....

[@Mr.Fox.92]

How did you add the green background line over the new data? As in, how did you overlap it on top? Great video by the way!

[@hhwippedcream]

What an awesome piece of tech!!!

[@hhwippedcream]

KZbinr discovers new species of Telerium with this outrageous device - clickbait title

[@chemistryofquestionablequa6252]

This is wild, could be incredibly useful!

[@The-One-and-Only100]

I have the 102, and I love it ❤ Hold up basic xrf with a radiacode that sounds like something fun I could do, but I'm not sure if mine would work as well since the smaller crystal Also no last minute test to see if it was or wasn't xrf on the tellurium

[@franciscasey3789]

Your 102 has the same size crystal as all the Radiacodes 10x10x10mm. The 101 and 102 use a 3x3mm SiPM detector, and the 103 uses a 6x6mm SiPM detector. so long story short the only difference between 102 and 103 is the resolution of the spectra and the 103 has is a little faster at collecting a spectra.

[@The-One-and-Only100]

@@franciscasey3789 thanks for the correction also have you tried out xrf with your radiacode (I tried it but the best sample I could detect was silver)

[@WR3ND]

is there a function to zero-out background? That seems like it would be very useful in this sort of device for observably detecting changes and analyzing specific targets. Thanks.

[@thesciencefurry]

Omg I had the idea of trying x ray flourece aswell but I wasn't sure if that works, because the x rays are pretty weak I think.

[@PyrotechnicalScience]

Yeah, that’s why I was very surprised that the radiacode was even able to pick up any signal at all!

[@evanbrown7325]

So where can I get me some Chernobyl blueberries?

[@gardenguy357]

100 cpm background is pretty elevated unless that is a pancake style detector; then its usually 3 times as high as the normal background is which tbh it makes sense if the background of the area truely is around 40cpm due to the size of it i think its a pancake style

[@The-One-and-Only100]

It's a crystal, not a geiger tube

[@justinbanks2380]

13:04 what is the second peak above background? The one to the right

[@joecasablanca4231]

Nice video man, but for me it doesnt work, cant replicate it. I have a radiacode 103 and same setup, lead wall, I have 9 x 0.9 microcuries Am241 smoke detector sources behind a thin film of polycarbonate. I am still getting the characteristic two peak spectrum of Am241 despite less cpm due to lead wall as baseline, no matter how weak the signal is.. Baseline is unlike yours, with the small peak at 20 keV and big peak at 60 keV. A guy tried to dissolve this smoke detector cores with HCl and failed cos apparently the Am is pressed into or under a thin film of gold. So you should get a gold K alpha straight out of the source. Quite frustrating. I tried a lot of iodine / iodine compounds which seemed to yield some peaks, but require further investigation. Did you put 6 smoke detector cores under this metal cap in the ionisation chamber? Why didnt you remove the metal cap, which seems to attenuate and aditionally pollute the spectrum which signals.

[@ayden282]

this is so cool !

[@Curiosity_lab]

Pretty cool, Might have to get one. Where did you source the Ukrainian berries from ?

[@PyrotechnicalScience]

the company sent me them but really any blueberries or even mushrooms in the fallout areas should have enough Cs137 to see! You can find these fallout maps online.

[@WR3ND]

This is like a few hundred bucks, right? It should come with a case. That wasn't made clear in your presentation, but you seemed to be saying that one isn't included.

[@zyxwvutsrqponmlkh]

Put this in your tricorder.

[@milanpintar]

How old are you? you sound 40. Great video and great voice

[@justinbanks2380]

Why bother ordering smoke detectors when you can get easily and usually on sale (they are often subsided somewhat by local and state governments, here at least, as it's cheaper than the money that would have to be spent on the fire departments without them) and they even usually come in multi packs. Cost I'm guessing?

[@sitwazheng]

鲜蓝莓0.63μSv/h，9cpm 😅不清楚算不算是正常😅

[@color_my_life_fr]

Il à une vieille merde avec du radium en décomposition dans sa chambre à coucher 😆 C'est des CPM (coups par minute) ÷ 60 = "CPS" coups par secondes.

[@ethanbarnes3973]

I LOVE YOU!

[@daysejones968]

will you eat them?

[@PyrotechnicalScience]

That would be a negative, lol

[@The-One-and-Only100]

@PyrotechnicalScience no peanut butter and blueberry (extra cesium) jam sandwiches anytime soon 😋 👌

[@SiliconeSword]

Chad Nile Red

[@bader51500]

Nile Red is more focused on chemistry, but this channel is about science in general. For example, this video is more physics focused 😅

[@ieatdirtwasntavailable]

I would love one of these, but $350 is a bit too much for a thing i wont ever use, a regular geiger counter is about $200 though, so if i was ever planning on doing something with radiation, i would definitely pay twice as much for all these nice features

[@The-One-and-Only100]

The channel called Studio 326 does a lot of radiation detector reviews and recently a video about a 50 buck geiger counter was really good like it could detect higher levels than even really expensive geiger counters

[@technoman9000]

Yeah $350 is steep but it has so many possibilities. I only have a GQ GMC-300S... Simple Geiger tube. It's nothing compared to this fancy sensor.

[@thesciencefurry]

I bought it two days ago. And yeah with things like this is always a question of will I use it often enough in the long term that it's worth it.

[@The-One-and-Only100]

@thesciencefurry it's basically a dollar a day for a year, so if you could save a dollar a day rather than spend it on something else, then you will have enough to buy one and I have the 102 since I bought it a day before the 103 came out but I'm still happy with it and if you want to save some money just buy a 102

[@technoman9000]

​@@The-One-and-Only100Nice rationalization. Maybe I'll set up a Radiacode jar, and put a dollar in every day of the year I feel like I could use a Radiacode...