rad education

["Knox, Cathy" <cknox@cassandra.dehs.umn.edu>]

Did someone say they were tired of teaching rad basics with the standard
"point the meter and hear it click kind of exercises", (watch dials, camping 
lantern mantles, KCL, fire alarm sources, etc)? I read a horribly boring 
presentation
(which was written for lay person on radiation basics), where a 
comparison of the half-life concept was made with pop corn.  As soon as I got 
home that night, I told my kids we had to find out if  popcorn truly did have 
a half-life...they were busy the next two hours counting kernels and eating 
the by-products (popped kernels)...we were sucessful...popping corn in 
multiples of 100 we found had a halflife of 28 seconds.  I don't know about 
other kids, but mine were surprised (I pretended to be amazed) to 
find half the kernels popped in 28 seconds reguardless of the amount we put 
in, They were able to witness twice the kernels didn't need twice the time...

It also seems to me the concept of decay could brought to life with a 
musical chair kind of activity where kids (real kids as well as grown up kids)
could run around with velcro "P's" and "N's" to make partical conversions 
 and ping pong ball shooters or confettie poppers would be the natural choice 
for beta energy emmisions; flashlites or toy ray guns for gamma emmisions;
(I don't have a group of kids to try that one on, unfortunately)...as far as 
technical detail, someday some of them will be exposed to the specific and 
accurate info...and when they do they are likely to remember the day they ran 
around the chairs shooting stuff or chasing popcorn kernels across the 
floor...
 
If anyone gives these lessons a try, let me know how it goes!

cknox@cassandra.dehs.umn.edu