Easily available sources

There are still a lot of people who do not realize, that radioactivity and ionizing particles have always been around – coming from the ground or space. For demonstrating everyday radiation with our MX-10 you can just let it run and wait until you catch particles from natural background radiation. Or if you get lucky, you will catch a muon from cosmic rays.

Although this demonstration is also useful, busy teachers need something faster to show – and there are a few options to start with, available to the public:

• Glassware, tableware, jewellery and ceramic tiles incorporating uranium (a uranium glass sample is a part of our Edukit set)
• thoriated tungsten welding electrodes (part of our Edukit set)
• thoriated incandescent gas mantles for gas lamps
• radioluminous paints
• potassium chloride - KCl (contains 0.012% of the natural radioactive isotope K40)
• The last example is even more simple: just take some cloth or a few layers of toilet paper, put it on the tube of the vacuum cleaner as a sort of makeshift filter, let the cleaner run for some time and then place the „filter“ carefully over the chip area – usually you will catch more alpha particles as you imitate the procedure to measure radon in the air