Re: Cloud chamber experiment

[Lewis Dallas <nukeman39@yahoo.com>]

--- Mr Jo <mjo@scs.unr.edu> wrote:
> 
> I just received a call from a local HS science
> teacher. He wants to do a cloud
> chamber experiment with his students. 

>     5) place a radiation source or observe
> cosmic radiation in the cloud
> chamber. I have Coleman mantle for source.
 
I read an article quite a while ago that some school
science labs had been contaminated when a gas mantle
was used for cloud chamber experiments.   It seems
that the alcohol dissolved the thorium from the gas
mantle.   I believe the article was in either the
Health Physics Journal or Newsletter.  A search of
Quest may be helpful.  I don't have a copy of Quest
but perhaps someone on Radsafe may and could do a
search.
   I hope that your friend hasn't done the experiment
yet, but if he has check the jar and area where he did
the experiment for contamination.  If he did the
experiment and it didn't work, he may have gotten a
non-radioactive gas mantle.    

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