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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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.