(02-18-2014, 10:34 PM)Hank 91 link Wrote:Uranium Ore -- $39.95
You know, the Uranium ore on Amazon gets ragged on all the time, but I actually considered buying it. I ended up going with the ore from United Nuclear because they offer count rate information, and I think it was a bit cheaper.
Lest anyone think I'm some sort of mad scientist, I wanted it because I do a lot of work that involves radon exposure to samples and examining mitigation techniques. I work in ultra-low background alpha particle counting, and a single atom of radon can seriously affect results at this level. We used to have a 5 kBq radon source, but an un-thinking coworker put it in a vacuum tube and, well, now we don't. It also turns out that those sources are illegal to buy unless you have crazy-ass licenses that we are too small to really afford, so I can't just buy a new one (which is sort of crazy, unless you ate it that source wouldn't be dangerous, and the Cs gamma sources we have would probably be worse). So I wanted to use Uranium ore, which should be in rough equilibrium throughout the decay chain, to act as a new source. Unfortunately the ore samples were far less active, more like 200 Bq max, though it's hard to measure. I miss my old source. Though I am currently using the new rocks for an experiment, we'll see how that goes...