DCHAS-L Discussion List Archive
From: Jeffrey Lewin <jclewin**At_Symbol_Here**MTU.EDU>
Subject: Re: FW: [DCHAS-L] Radiation Experiments
Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 12:04:16 -0400
Reply-To: DCHAS-L <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU>
Message-ID: CAEwQnqiSVoZhKLS_N7BBzDgWRf5r-iVwLVrkh8fhRTAzHxZaKQ**At_Symbol_Here**mail.gmail.com
In-Reply-To <4D0A3882C09D2E42BE7C6B7265CB0D5FCF5C7862**At_Symbol_Here**AVATAR.umhb.edu>
Out of curiosity what "experiments" is the instructor doing?
I cover radiation in a couple of course, including a clinical instrumentation course I'm involved with. As part of the course we take a field trip to the nuclear medicine lab at the local hospital as well as look at and discuss our scintillation counter operation.
As part of the lab activity I've inherited a clock with a radioactive dial. I'll take the clock out and a Geiger counter and we use them to do a simple experiments on distance (measure counts at various distances) and shielding (repeat with different materials including paper, wood and a chunk of lead I got out of an old scintillation counter (wrapped in plastic). We also, can infer time as well. The clock then gets stored in the store room behind the lead.
We then finish off (in both this course and my occupational hygiene and biology course) discussing the sad story of the "Radium Girls." One of our humanities professors has published a story called "For the love of pretty things, dying for science" (Robert Johnson, 2010) that I use as the discussion point.
Jeff Lewin
Biological Sciences
Michigan Technological University
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