Novel explanations of radiation

[Rick_Strickert@radian.com (Rick Strickert)]

Recently, a number of books on radiation have been recommended for
reading.  There are others that have not.

In a 1995 book on NORM, a geologist author begins a discussion of
radiation units as follows:

    "It would appear that radiation units have been designed by
    scientists to mollify, obviate, and generally create a fog of
    confusion for their fellow scientists and the public at large.
    This conspiracy was developed to conceal the fact that scientists
    do not want their colleagues to know that they don't know much
    about radiation.  The reason they don't know much about radiation
    is that all good scientists watched late night movies on
    television and discovered that Marie Curie was maimed and died of
    an overdose of radiation.  These young, impressionable scientists
    thought twice about the hazards of radiation research, so they
    devised a clever curtain of conspiracy laced with confounding
    nomenclature.  This may be a small exaggeration, but brings forth
    the following simple diabolical truth." (pp.68-69)

The author then goes on in the chapter to explain the relationships
between the curie, rad, RBE, rem, gray, and sievert (and the Hubble
constant!), such as:

    "The biological units, rad and rem, are related to the curie and
    the roentgen through a series of "fudge" factors." (p.70)

    "One roentgen per minute (rpm) is equal to about 1 Curie or
    3.7x10^10 disintegrations per second...  Disintegrations per
    minute are roughly equivalent to counts per minute." (pp.72-73)

The author closes the chapter with an example calculation of dose rates
over a period of several minutes (with an answer of "74.95 uR total
dose") by noting:

    "Hopefully, the reader is not in total disarray and brain dead
    by now." (p.78)

Well, at least not from the radiation...

Rick

Richard G. Strickert, Ph.D           |  "Errors using inadequate data
Radian International, Austin, TX     |   are much less than those using
512-310-5259, FAX 512-244-0160       |   no data at all."
Internet: Rick_Strickert@radian.com  |     - Charles Babbage (1792-1871)
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