Re: Novel explanations of radiation

[Bob Hearn <rah@america.net>]

Please post name, author, author's affiliation and publisher of this book.

Thanks!
Bob Hearn

At 03:46 PM 10/28/96 -0600, you wrote:
>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)
> ---> "All written IMHO." <---       |
>
>