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Duct Tape
CandyMan writes: "The incredible story of the 15-year-old kid who built a nuclear reactor in his mother's toolshed, using common household objects, aluminium foil and duct tape. Sample quote: 'When David's Geiger counter began picking up radiation five doors from his mom's house, he decided that he had "too much radioactive stuff in one place", and began to dissasemble the reactor'." Well, I tried to check this out and see if it was for real, and I found a much longer version of the same article which appears legit, if still rather unbelievable. If any of you irradiate yourselves, you didn't read about it here, okay?
I went to high school with him, and was in the same scout troop as him (Troop 371).
We were in the same circle of (sometimes self proclaimed) weirdos who were all obsessive about one thing or another, and hung out together.
I remember when he brought in a giger counter, and we checked the food in the east center caf to see if it was radioactive. We had a good laugh when we got a blip from the soft serve ice cream.
Later, when he started carrying around radioactive material in his pockets at school, and showing me what looked like radiation burns, I tried to not hang out with him as much, and switched seats in Anthropology so that I wasn't right next to him.
It was a weird time - I was at MSU when I got the paniced call from him saying that the EPA was currently raiding his house, and wanting to know what catalog he had ordered the smoke detectors from.
The author who did the Harper's article was working on a book late last year - he asked me a few questions about Dave. I wonder when it will come out...
If anyone has any questions about Dave, just reply to this, and I'll answer what I remember...
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Oops.
So, just you remember that kids -- choices you make in your youth can limit your career options further down the road.
I sure think he didn't want quite that result, though.
His reaction to it is interesting. (To paraphrase Reader's Digest):
- David is now in the Navy, where he reads about steroids, melanin, genetic codes, prototype reactors, amino acids, and criminal law. He explains "...I wanted to make a scratch in life." As far as his radiation exposure, "I've still got time." He goes on to venture that "I don't believe I took more than 5 years off my life."
Quite the merit badge."...America's great minds of today, teaching America's great minds of tomorrow. Poor bastards." -- A Beautiful Min
...does anyone else find it just slightly strange that his name is DAVID HAHN!??
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
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fat lenny's gonna lick your brain today.
This seems to be fiction invented by a writer who is well-educated in nuclear physics, and who is depending on the fact that his readers aren't.
For example, this paragraph from the story cannot be right:
"It was slow going until one day, driving through Clinton Township to visit his girlfriend, Heather, he noticed that his Geiger counter went wild as he passed Gloria's Resale Boutique/Antique. The proprietor, Gloria Genette, still recalls the day when she was called at home by a store employee who said that a polite young man was anxious to buy an old table clock with a tinted green dial but wondered if she'd come down in price."
This doesn't make sense. Geiger counters are not very sensitive because they depend on the ability of an energetic particle or photon to ionize gas molecules. This takes a lot of energy.
To detect the radiation on the street using a geiger counter, the radiation near where the source was stored would have to be so intense that the workers in the store would become sick.
Read message #173 above, by Kierthos (Kierthos@aol.com):
"And as I recall, the radioactive particles emitted by Uranium are alpha (okay, it's been a long time, so I'm guessing), which can be stopped by a stout pair of pants."
That's true. Beta radiation (fast electrons) doesn't travel far either. Another kind of radiation emitted by radioactive substances is gamma rays. Gamma rays are photons more energetic than X-rays. Gamma rays can penetrate easily. However, consider that the article quote implies that the distance over which the radiation was detected was from inside the store to the street. I'm guessing that would be at least 6 meters, or 20 feet.
Gamma radiation from a radioactive substance is omni-directional. The energy radiates the same way in all directions. As radiation spreads into a volume, its intensity is divided proportional to the square of the distance. This means that someone working in the store would be exposed to a far higher intensity of radiation than would be detectable in the street.
Also, the amount of radium (radioactive material) in luminous clock dials was extremely small. Radium was, and is, extremely expensive, so there never would have been very much in one place. Radium-226, the most common isotope, decays to half its original intensity in 1600 years. So there would never have been a reason to include an extra sample of radium with a clock.
Conclusion: This story is, at least partly, a hoax.
Bush's education improvements were
While you can't do everything on a budget, you generally don't need a lot of equipment in order to do science, even cutting edge science. Policymakers should remember that when they consider trying to restrict the availability of technology or bet that it won't proliferate. You may be able to track and restrict nuclear materials, with occasional problems, but you can't restrict biotech or computers.
The situation is really not unlike software. You may have big companies going out and spending billions on "enterprise software", while nimble smaller players do a better job with open source.