(continued)

Indeed! What is the long term effects of being raised by the kind of nerds who would give their kid an Atomic Energy Lab?

Dan Yocum
yocum@fnal.gov
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Batavia, IL 60510

Long term effects? None whatsoever. Uranium 238 is only dangerous if in finely powdered form and inhaled. You can safely swallow a pellet of U238; it just passes through.

Man, I wish I'd got this kit when I was 11 or so.

I only got to play with a cloud chamber recently as part of my physics class, and I have to say it was one of those *woah* moments. It's one thing to read about all the theory etc, but to actually see the trails of alpha particles, muons etc...

Oh I'm sorry. Radiation!!11 doubleplusungood crimethink.

If you look at the 2 pictures you'll see they are not for the same thing. The lower open box picture is indeed for the Gilbert set. This was a really great scientific kit and nowhere near as dangerous as is claimed, even though one of those radioactive sources was a Gamma source! The upper box is actually a Kit from American Basic Science Club, not the Gilber Kit at all. ABSC sold a set of 9 kits that could come as monthly mailings or all at once that covered electronics, optics, photography, atomic energy and more, and sold for less than $50 total. They acomplished a lot of this by clever reuse of the parts in the kits. They also sold many of the things covered in the 9 kits as individual labs, the box shown here is such a lab.

And yes. I had both of them. I bought the ABSC kits with my newspaper route money. The Gilbert Kit was handed down in used condition from a cousin. No children were harmed in the learning of science, and I suspect I may never have been involved in sciene if the current mentality reflected in the lame kits available for children now and demonstrated in including these items in this list was in effect at the time.

At first I thought that Ms. Ferrari's selection of toys and her comments, as over-the-top as they are, were intended as pure comedy, with it taken for granted that her readers are well aware of that, and just enjoying the silliness. I had never been to this site before, and after reading the lawn darts and atomic energy lab pieces, I assumed it must be something like the Onion! But she suddenly sounds very serious in the last paragraph above. Now I think she is just a very ignorant and gullible writer doing her lame best.

Yes, indeed, this example demonstrates the ignorance of the author, which has now been discussed in embarassing detail at Slashdot. The amount of radiation in this kit is less than the radiation from the natural potassium in your body, so if you're worried about this kit you better stay away from banannas. [Ribald comment omitted.] The only thing worse than the author's ignorance is the author's ignorance compounded by her smug self-assurance in writing about it.

I had one of the American Basic Science Club kits when I was a kid. It was really, really fun. I set up the cloud chamber every time I could persuade my Dad to get some dry ice for it. I wish I could still get one of these for my own son. It's articles like this that prevent that from happening.

I wasa born in 1962...bummer!!

Where was this when I was a kid?? All I got to play with in the 70's were some reactive metal salts, weak acids and some basic (>pH 7.0) chemicals...nothing like a bubble chamber!

Jeff

Uranium was never linked to Gulf War Illness and the over 3,000 bioassay tests from Iraqi Freedom have all come back negative.

You can make your own cloud chamber using a foreign made gas lantern mantle since they are coated with radioactive thorium in larger amounts than in the science kit.

Oh, for crying out loud. Damn English majors.

Look, it's uranium-bearing ore. It's a rock. One you could pick up off the ground all over the southwest. Bunch of it at the headwaters of the Arkansas River, near Leadville, CO. (In fact, it's associated with lead ores in general.) It's got 238U in it because that's 99+ percent of all uranium.

Cripes, your granite countertops have uranium in them, granite often has U in the range of thousands of parts per million.

As to the effects of being raised by "the kind of nerds who would give their kid an Atomic Energy Lab" --- well, I got one, and I've got a bunch of scholarly publications, a couple patents, a comfortable six-figure salary, and I know what "uranium bearing ore" means.

AWESOME! Where do I get one SERIOUSLY!

> AWESOME! Where do I get one SERIOUSLY!

You can buy some of the parts, you can make some of them much more cheaply.

Uranium ore
http://www.unitednuclear.com/uranium.htm
(Yes, the polonium people. The low level stuff would work fine. So would a glow in the dark watch.)

Spinthariscope
http://www.unitednuclear.com/spinthariscope.htm
(Same people, and apparently the only manufacurer of spinthariscopes in the world.)

Electroscope
http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/electroscope.html

Wilson Cloud Chamber
http://www.madphysics.com/exp/building_wilsons_cloud_chamber.htm

Geiger counter
http://www.imagesco.com/articles/geiger/01.html
(A high level do it yourself article)
http://www.blackcatsystems.com/GM/geiger_counter.html
http://www.mineralab.com/Geiger%20Counters.htm
http://www.gammascout.com/
(Three sources, models from $150 to $1,000)

Remember, that was $49.50 in 1951 dollars. That's $372 in 2005 Consumer Price Index dollars. It'd be like six hundred some in dog dollars.

What's the effect of being raised by the kind of nerd who owned these things and even built some of them? This neuroscientist nerd has one nerd offspring PhD candidate in neuroscience, one PhD candidate in nanotech engineering, and one about to get her master's in neuroscience (but she's only 21 -- she'll catch up.

Oh, man, I remember how much I wanted one of these! But, at age 13, I couldn't come up with enough money and my father wouldn't help out. I did, however, enjoy experimenting with my Gilbert Chemistry Set until my sister and her friend ate most of it.

I had one of those as a kid, and it was a lot later than 1951, I'm guessing around 1969. It was part of a subscription in which you would receive a new experiment each month or so. Later experiments would be dependent upon the parts of previous experiments. It was a hell of a lotta fun, and very educational. The amount of radioactive material of tiny, it was literally on the head of a pin.

I have no children. It's the only way to keep them from getting hurt. Anyone who does not do likewise is irresponsible.

wow, I had one of these! brings back lots of wonderful memories of plotting world domination in my basement laboratory. unfortunately, my parents stopped my master plans by ending my subscription to the mail-order series of science experiments this was part of. the next shipment was going to be the death ray gun, so I was very disappointed.

Paige is absolutely correct. If you took that piece of uranium ore, placed it in a slingshot and fired it at someone's eye from one foot away...well, you could cause great harm. Thanks for the heads up!