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I must have had this tritium keychain for a while, because I remember asking our chemistry teacher in school if we could measure it with the geiger counter there. Being the typical German teacher with 0 passion for getting kids involved in science, she refused because it was her lunch break.

Well, now I can do it myself finally. Result: No noticeable radiation through the acrylic tube it is sold in. The bare glass vessel however causes a slightly elevated 'reading'  😁 

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July 31, 2018

Comments

John McCormick

Tiny glow sticks for a tiny rave.

ulf karlsson

The very weak beta radiation from tritium is not really detectable by standard gm-tubes. You need a detector with mylar film window to even let the particles enter the detector.

Daddy Bearcat

A friend of mine collects and works on watches. He has at least one with tritium tubes embedded in the hour and minute hands, and where it stopped for a long time (before he got it), there were silhouettes of the hands burned into the paint on the face of the watch. That thing made my old airport surplus detector go crazy.

marcoreps

Oh really? ... want :) My tritium tube has probably decayed a bit already

marcoreps

I've read that on the interwebs too ... hope my skin is equally impenetrable

Anonymous

My Gamma Scout can detect (very small but misurable) increase in counts even when the tritium source is in its plastic case.

Uwe Zimmermann

I was lucky with most of my German science teachers - apart from a physics teacher from years 7-10. Other than him my science teachers invested quite a lot of their extra time in extracurricular "Arbeitsgemeinschaften" in physics, chemistry, biology, math, photography... but this was in the 1980s...

marcoreps

Oh that's nice! We had Arbeitsgemeinschaften where we got the wonderful opportunity to start an imaginary business and learn about things like "don't spend more money than you earn" or "be nice to your customers" The epic conclusion of the whole thing was a waffle sale on one day at the end of the semester 🙌