qualiawould it be rude to use a little atom board as a bitflip testbench with a wee smote of sealed radium nestled betwixt its sodimms
none gender with left politics@qualia sealed radium? That isn't gonna emit much radiation that will make it through to sodimms. Would need to wait for daughter isotopes of daughter isotopes to start beta emitting, which, depending on the sample size, would NOT happen very frequently. I could calculate this actually...
@vikxin i assure you it and its myriad daughters are quite lively already as measured by NaI(Tl) gamma spectroscopy. i will Not be performing a chemical extraction of Just The Radium for this
@vikxin no but i have been eyeing one. those are CsI or GAGG(Ce) (the new ones) but don't have the best resolution or stopping power, and i've learned are also prone to a lot of backscatter noise in the spectrum just due to the small size of the thing and closeness of readout electronics
i have a, iirc, 1.25" NaI(Tl) on a 3" PMT (bit excessive) on an HP preamp base, and then either a Canberra Model 35+ MCA or a Canberra 556 AIM MCA system plus three other bins of miscellaneous signal processing legos. the sample, scintillator, PMT, and preamp live inside a graded Al-Pb pig
i haven't thrown a Ba133m line at it but iirc it kinda ballparks in that 7% FWHM resolution range. its fun. it does not fit in my pocket
@qualia the spectrum reading on mine is...not good. It's basically useless unless you have something specific that's way louder than background. I assume. I've never verified this
@vikxin go leave it on your toilet and integrate your results for a day and see if you can find the uranium
@qualia wouldn't it be more effective to find a granite rock? Who knows what material my toilet is made of
@vikxin well sure but i mean you do possess one way to find out
marble countertop, container of salt substitute, operating HEPA air filter; pick your NORM
@qualia I've tried HEPA filter actually! I must have to leave it there for a VERY long time, since it didn't look elevated over background when I tried
@qualia by "salt substitute" I'm assuming you mean KCl, since, you know, 🍌
@vikxin yeah the filter has to be running several hours, your house has to be pretty sealed up, and some areas simply don't have high radon. which is fortunate really. get your CO2 sensor up for a while and try again
i can pick up the ∆CPM on a metal β/γ GM probes so that little guy surely can under the right conditions
@qualia oh I had a radon sensor here for a bit, before bringing it to my parents. It was really, really low
@vikxin lucky
my house has shot past 4pCi/L on cold still winter days where nobody's leaving the house. this ironically is usually when everyone is already sick
@qualia it's not great. But it's also way better than it was before I brought the sensor
@qualia after I found out my dad had (operable) lung cancer, I basically forced them to get radon testing. My dad exercises frequently in the lowest part of the house, which meant it was almost certainly caused by radon. Anyway, this is after the first round of mitigation.
@vikxin oh dear
yeah that's in that "do something about it" range. like the local health department might have guidelines or maybe even tax rebates for radon fan retrofits
@qualia I want to encourage them to do a second round but good luck convincing my dad. "These regulations are usually pretty conservative." Maybe the EU's 2.8 pCi/L, but the US's 4 pCi/L? Kinda doubt it. And this regularly skirts above it anyway, even if it doesn't stay there.
@vikxin radon fan installations are like a thousand bucks and if they intend to sell their home ever it'll need one installed anyways
there is no safe exposure level to radon yippee