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1950s Toy That Included Actual Uranium Ore Goes On Display At Museum
hypnosec writes: The Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab — dubbed the world's most dangerous toy — has gone on display at the Ulster Museum in Northern Ireland. The toy earned the title because it includes four types of uranium ore, three sources of radiation, and a Geiger counter that enables parents to measure just how contaminated their child have become. The Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab was only available between 1951 and 1952 and was the most elaborate atomic energy educational kit ever produced. The toy was one of the most costly toys of the time, retailing at $50 — equivalent to around $400 today.
"Perhaps it wouldn’t pass today’s health and safety standards but it is a perfect fit for the Elements exhibition.”
Perhaps? So, it might actually not be that big a deal.
I bullshit you not.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Every time I see a reference to this thing as being the most dangerous toy a lot of people speculate that it would be impossible to get today with today's safety and litigious oriented economy... except that is pretty wrong. When I was a kid in the 90s, I was able to get radioactive sources and uranium for use in a cloud chamber I built. Those things are still available today as I just purchased some sources a year ago for an educational display (price went up, would not be affordable to a middle school student now though, but maybe a determined high school student with a job).
Everything in that kit is available today, just maybe not all packaged together in the same combination. And a lot of it is still sold for educational purposes.
I feel cheated. As a kid, all I got was a microscope.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
Calling it the most dangerous toy seems like a gross overstatement. Yeah, Uranium ore is scary, but it's a fairly low-level radiation source and as an alpha emitter it's only dangerous internally. Chemical and physical hazards are a lot more serious. Toys with lead paint that kids were likely to chew on were probably more dangerous, not to mention ones that could catch kids on fire (ordinary chemical sets) or get them run over in traffic (like bicycles).
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
So, I missed this having been born in the late 60s but, at least I was able to have my unsuspecting parents purchase proper chemistry and electronics kits for me. I could stick us out of the house or create and electric fence to keep the cat of my room at night. When I tried to give my son the same opportunity, the offerings that were readily available were either so limited or so expensive as to be useless or prohibitive and useless. Then over the last several years, I've heard tell of kinds taking chemistry lab in high school with very little lab and almost no chems. Just how many rads we talking here?
More dangerous than lawn darts?
http://www.cpsc.gov/PageFiles/122377/5053.pdf
People are scared of radiation because they don't understand it.
Rather then educate children todays society is more concerned with protecting them.
Relevant XKCD for dosage information.
I would be interested in how many banana doses of radiation this kit contained.
Everything is radioactive, granite countertops, bananas, sea-salt, living in Denver (higher elevations), hell carbon dating works because all life is radioactive.
The A.C. Gilbert House and Discovery Center in Salem, Oregon has many of Gilbert's invention, including this toy. I remember seeing it there in the late 90's and again when I visited about 4-5 years ago. If you're in Salem, it's worth a visit.
Reading all the replies so far, maybe we can have a vote on what's most dangerous:
- Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab.
- Anything by Mainway Toys (SNL)
- Lawn Darts
- Chemistry sets
- Electrical kits
- Bicycles (and motorbikes)
- Scooters
- Archery kits
- etc.
Danger is/should be part of growing up.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
"Do not taunt Super Happy Atomic Energy Lab"
Proverbs 21:19
800 volts on the plates of all those old heathkit transmitters using 6146 tubes. 3000 on most linear amps. ooh, and dig those metal-ceramic power tubes with beryllium oxide ceramics, or the insulator blocks for conducted cooling tubes being beryllium oxide.
or hunting. those .22 rifles can put an eye out!
scouting, perhaps? axes, knives, and pack saws, not to mention building fires.
I won't even start with farm kids, all those types of poo, power take-offs, barn roofs, tools, welders...
and this texting and Facebook thing, well, get somebody riled enough to punch you into Jello.
there is always a way for a kid to get into trouble. don't leave them to the TV, be around and guide them.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Working power drill press, wood lathe, jig saw, sanding disk.
Or, the Thingmaker die caster with high temp exposed parts?
Heaven forefend that we give our kids toys that let them learn useful things.
Can anyone even do woodburning crafts anymore?
You don't have to go far - just take the americium for a smoke detector and you've got a radiation source.
Or you can buy it from the US Atomic Energy Commission for $1500 per gram. Or you can order (really) small amounts online, exempt from USNRC and State licensing. They produce sufficient count-rate to check survey meters or conduct most nuclear science experiments in normal lab periods using standard Geiger Mueller counters or scintillation detectors, yet low enough so as not to present any radiation hazard.
Or you can order directly from the government. Now that I've done all those searches for "radioisotopes for sale" I'm probably on a few watch lists :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I think it is outrageous and disheartening the attitude of the media towards chemistry and the efforts of schools and reporters to terrify people of chemicals and issue these hysterical claims that are based on ignorance.
The materials and and equipment in that kit were completely harmless. Implying that a spinthariscope is dangerous is completely irresponsible. Likewise uranium is completely harmless. You can find many common, everyday articles, like bananas, that have more radiation than uranium ore.
This kind of anti-science propaganda is driving kids out of chemistry and physics classes and destroying what little is left of America's old can-do spirit.
The kind where you could learn something? Yeah, we can't have that!
What an outlandish concept, teaching kids something while them having fun! Learning has to be serious business!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Damn, and here I was going to have some delivered to the Whitehouse.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If you want a really awesome chemistry set, you can buy one:
http://hms-beagle.com/heirloom-chemistry-set/
This was a KickStarter project. He was trying to raise $30K and he raised almost five times that much.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1742632993/heirloom-chemistry-set
If you can't afford the full set, contact the store; the web page says they can sell any subset of the kit.
Hmm, if I ever make it to Kansas City I will try to go check out the H.M.S. Beagle science store.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The fact that it is even called 'the most dangerous toy' is evidence that some people need a serious beating.
Yeah, sure, "Radiation!!!" is scary; but low level sources are pretty tepid unless you do your best to consume them(and sometimes even then) and 'uranium ore' can(depending on source and quality) be about as geiger-counter-clicking as a nice, safe, granite building. It's trivially apparent that any toy that constituted a decent choking hazard was orders of magnitude more hazardous.
You don't have to go far - just take the americium for a smoke detector and you've got a radiation source.
4.47 billion years. No one rational is afraid of it's radioactivity - it's entirely scare-mongering. This is why no one cares about the uranium in granite countertops. Especially the scare-mongering over depleted uranium being somehow seen as more toxic than lead is entirely political theater ungrounded in any science.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When it says "the most dangerous toy" I laughed thinking this product never disabled kids or sent them to the hospital like LAWN DARTS (Jarts) which was responsible for 1000's of injures and even disabilities... don't know if any one died but this toy was certainly much more dangerous that the kits described in the article.
Carrying it in your pocket could become the latest birth control technique :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
New York State Health Department research scientist Michael Kitto, PhD, says only a small fraction of the granite samples he has tested have emitted radon at levels that were over those considered safe.
But he added that a few of his samples showed levels that were high enough to alarm him.
“I wouldn’t have them in my house,” Kitto tells WebMD.
Rice University physics professor William Llope, PhD, found potentially dangerous levels of radiation in some tested samples of granite used in countertops.
. Not all granite is the same.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
When I was a child, we used to find old light switches and break them open to play with the mercury in them. But it did eventually kill me.
Since natural uranium has a half life measured in billions of years, the only way it could kill you in five minutes is if a significantly large chunk of it fell on your head from a great height....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
According to this article lawn darts killed 4 people (3 of them children) and injured 6700 before they were banned. The article ranks them as the most dangerous toy.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Raw uranium ores are a lot more radioactive than pure uranium oxides like yellowcake (U3O8) because of all the shorter-lived isotopes that have built up in the ore bodies from a billion years or so of decays of U-235 (700 million years) and U-238 (over 4 billion years). The other thing is that solid lumps of uranium are a good shield against radiation and the alpha particles resulting from decay events a millimetre or two under the surface are unlikely to escape the lump of metal and be dangerous.
I'd imagine more harmful to ingest/inhale uranium ore... in addition to radioactivity, uranium is also a heavy metal like lead. (in both senses of the term "heavy metal".)
However most ore is quite weak, with 1% being pretty decent... I think it's economical to mine it as low as 0.1%. A few mines in Canada are near 20%, though (which I suppose is related to Canada being the biggest producer... 1/5th the ore is end product, instead of 1/1000th!). Ore will often have lead and such in it as well (decay products), which is also toxic.
Sent from my PDP-11
Dozens of places in Colorado have the same kind of rock. Gold Hill or Jamestown, both just west of Boulder have hot spots from gold / tungsten / uranium mines that will kick a Geiger counter on moderate sensitivity. Still not very dangerous unless you fall head first on the rock, but fun to show the tourists.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I would really love a list of toys that cause mental/psychological damage.
Off the top of my head...
Hinton's Cubes
Lament Configuration
My First Waterboard Funtime set.
Am I missing any?
How about Top Ten Unsafe Toys for Christmas From David Letterman and The Late Show:
10. Junior Electrician Outlet Panel
9. Hasbro’s Slippery Steps
8. Black & Decker Silly Driller
7. Roof Hanger Paratrooper Outfit
6. Remco’s Pocket Hive
5. Traffic Tag
4. Will It Burn? From Parker Brothers
3. Chimney Explorer
2. My First Ferret Farm
1. Ooh – You’re Blue!, the Hold-Your-Breath Game
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
ahh...back in the day when "get off my lawn" could be backed up with an aerial barrage.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
A few kilos of uranium would be no worse than sleeping over a pile of bananas.
A kilo of pure U238 would still be about 12 MBq of activity, while a banana is about 15 Bq. So to get equivalent activity, you would need nearly a million bananas, or at ~120 g per banana, almost 100 metric tons of bananas. If assuming they were about the density of water (an overestimate), that is larger than the volume of a 40 ft shipping container, which to most people is a bit more than "a pile of bananas."
And that is a conservative estimate, as you wouldn't have a pure block of U238 very long. U238 decays to Th234 which has a 24 day half-life, then Pa234m with ~1 minute half-life, then Pa234 with a ~7 hr half-life, before finally getting another long lived isotope, U234. While U238 decays by alpha decay, the rest of the steps are almost are beta decays (some at almost twice the energy of K40's beta decay). Plus beta and alpha decays produce a bunch of lower energy gamma rays too, as they don't always decay into the ground state of a nucleus.
So one kilo of U238 that has reached a relative steady state decay into U234 will have a total activity of ~50 MBq, now up to several shipping containers worth of bananas to get equivalent activity. If you wanted an equivalent amount of energy released, you would need ~3.5 times as the 100 metric ton quote above, so now up to 350 metric tons of bananas.
U235 at least decays into a long lived isotope after two steps, and the intermediate product is only a low energy beta decay, so despite having six times quicker direct decay, it is closer to about twice as active and has much, much less non-alpha energy than U238.
Actually, refined or enriched uranium still isn't very radioactive, you can handle fuel pellets for a nuclear reactor with your hands without much of a problem (other than issues for how you would handle lead, since it is still a heavy metal for toxicity purposes).
It's after they've been in the reactor, and have had some fission going on, that you don't want to get anywhere near them. It's the fission fragments, the pieces that are left over after uranium is split that are far more radioactive. Heavy elements need a higher neutron to proton ratio to be stable than stable lighter elements do. (band of stability: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... ). So when you end up splitting a heavy element, you end up with lighter elements that have a lot more neutrons than what would be stable for them, and they decay from there.
I was going to say something similar. Radon is nasty stuff, ask people living in parts of Michigan where they need to have mandatory venting in houses for it. There's even a few places here in Ontario where radon venting is mandatory in your house, most of the southern part of the province has 50-800m of limestone over the bedrock and that's not enough to prevent seepage.
Om, nomnomnom...
It's the failure to analyze risk with some degree of perspective and avoidance of hysteria that really annoys me. Many aspects of the good old days were, in fact, bad (eg. the fact that the went around huffing tetraethyl lead combustion products basically all the time as though that were a good idea). Others offend the squeamish but start to look pretty harmless when you ask around about any actual, verified, injuries that they are supposed to have caused.
Mindless celebration of risk as some sort of virtue is puerile nonsense; but flinching before you've even determined that a risk is real is even worse.
From wikipedia:
"The major natural source of radioactivity in plant tissue is potassium: 0.0117% of the naturally-occurring potassium is the unstable isotope potassium-40 (40K). This isotope decays with a half-life of about 1.25 billion years (4×1016 seconds), and therefore the radioactivity of natural potassium is about 31 Bq/g – meaning that, in one gram of the element, about 31 atoms will decay every second.[2][3] Plants naturally contain other radioactive isotopes, such as carbon-14 (14C), but their contribution to the total activity is much smaller.[citation needed] Since a typical banana contains about half a gram of potassium,[4] it will have an activity of roughly 15 Bq.[5] Although the amount in a single banana is small in environmental and medical terms, the radioactivity from a truckload of bananas is capable of causing a false alarm when passed through a Radiation Portal Monitor used to detect possible smuggling of nuclear material at U.S. ports."
I guess unless you like having tumors.
At first I didn't like the idea of having tumors, but it's growing on me.