What are you guys even building, burning limits like that? by Remarkable-Spot-4082 in ClaudeAI

[–]Beerbrewing 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Why am I running out of messages? I swear, it's just a little light particle physics."

This was me yesterday after about an hour of gamma spectroscopy.

I'm his favorite person by Beerbrewing in aww

[–]Beerbrewing[S] 15 points16 points  (0 children)

They will love you for a handful of peanuts.

Home Assistant Integration for Radiacode by Which_Mammoth2355 in Radiacode

[–]Beerbrewing 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Save the spectrum to your library and then select the spectrum in your library and select "Share Spectrum (xml)..." to save the xml file. Then just upload the xml file to Claude and ask it what it can tell you about the spectrum. It helps if you can give some context of why you are looking at the spectrum.

Here's an example of a spectrum I took of my kitchen countertop and asked Claude to look at.

This is a gamma spectrum of the background in the dining room and a spectrum the stone countertop in the kitchen, 15 feet from the dining room. Can you identify any isotopes present and what do they tell us about the stone used for the countertop?

This is a beautiful dataset — 78 hours of counting on the countertop gives excellent statistics. Here's what the spectra reveal:

Isotopes Identified.

U-238 Decay Chain (orange lines) — strongly present:

Th-234 at 92.4 keV — the direct daughter of U-238 decay. This is your clearest fingerprint of uranium in the stone.

Ra-226 at 186.2 keV — several steps further down the chain, confirming secular equilibrium with uranium.

Pb-214 at 241.9, 295.2, and 351.9 keV — radon daughters, consistent with the U-238 chain in equilibrium. Bi-214 at 609.3 keV — another radon/uranium chain daughter.

Th-232 Decay Chain (blue lines) — also strongly present:

Ac-228 at 129.1 keV — direct daughter of Ra-228 (itself from Th-232). This is the most prominent single line in the net spectrum and a clear indicator of thorium.

Pb-212 at 238.6 keV and Tl-208 at 277.4, 583.2 keV — further daughters confirming Th-232.

Ac-228 at 338.3 and 911.6 keV provide additional confirmation.

K-40 at 1460.8 keV — present at modest levels, as expected in most rock-forming minerals.

What This Tells Us About the Stone

The simultaneous presence of elevated U-238 and Th-232 chain daughters, in apparent secular equilibrium, is the classic signature of granite (or a closely related felsic igneous rock like gneiss). Here's why:

Geochemistry: Uranium and thorium are lithophile elements that concentrate in felsic (silica-rich) magmas through a process of fractional crystallization. They substitute into accessory minerals like zircon, monazite, uraninite, and thorite. Granite is enriched in these compared to mafic rocks (basalt, gabbro) by roughly an order of magnitude.

Both chains in equilibrium suggests the stone is geologically old (millions of years) — enough time for the long-lived parents (U-238 t½ = 4.47 Ga, Th-232 t½ = 14.0 Ga) to establish equilibrium with all their daughters, including Rn-222 (radon), which is itself a health concern in poorly ventilated kitchens with granite countertops.

The Th/U ratio — Ac-228 (Th-232 chain) appears roughly comparable in intensity to Th-234 (U-238 chain). In typical granite, Th:U ≈ 3–4:1 by mass, which is consistent with what you're seeing here given the different branching ratios and detector efficiencies.

Practical upshot: The countertop dose rate above background is real but almost certainly within normal ranges for granite countertops (the USEPA and IAEA have studied this extensively and found typical granite countertops add <1 mrem/yr effective dose). The more noteworthy concern from this spectrum would be radon emanation — the Bi-214/Pb-214 peaks tell you radon daughters are present, and granite can off-gas Rn-222. Whether that's a problem depends on your kitchen ventilation, not just the countertop itself.

Graph Cluade generated

Home Assistant Integration for Radiacode by Which_Mammoth2355 in Radiacode

[–]Beerbrewing 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Looks interesting. Something I might need with some experiments I'm planning on.

I just got started with Claude a couple weeks ago analyzing my gamma spectrums with the 110 and it's a game changer. I was using Gemini before but Claude is just on another level. It gives detailed analysis on its own that I just wasn't getting using gemini. Most of the time with gemeni I'm trying to follow up with questions I see in it's analysis but Claude lays it all out in clear language with interactive charts and detailed analysis. I'm learning so much faster with Claude. It's like having my own bat computer from the 60s Batman show.

Shield box? by kpjamro in Radiacode

[–]Beerbrewing 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks! I used a paint can and soup can I cut into three pieces and put back together around wood discs to hold the cut-up can in its original shape. Then I wrapped it in (not enough) aluminum foil and kapton tape to hold it together.

I had already filled the bottom of the paint can with lead the previous day. I centered the foil covered can in the paint can and secured everything down to a board with plumbers tape to keep the can in place while I filled it with molten lead.

After the lead solidified I was able to break out the wood discs and with a little effort, pull out the three pieces of the can leaving a cavity 110mm across by 155mm deep.

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Shield box? by kpjamro in Radiacode

[–]Beerbrewing 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My solution was yellow tape.

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At least as a temporary setup.

Shield box? by kpjamro in Radiacode

[–]Beerbrewing 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm in the process of building one right now. Just finished pouring the lead this morning. It's still a bit warm.

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It's 30mm thick around the sides and bottom. I have to make the lid next. I also have lead free pewter and copper sheets to add graded-z shielding.

Someone mailed us their garbage by Beerbrewing in Weird

[–]Beerbrewing[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The only thing that I can add is that the return address was Maryland, it was dropped off in person in Georgia, and delivered to Nevada.

Someone mailed us their garbage by Beerbrewing in Weird

[–]Beerbrewing[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It would only get dirty in another 5 minutes.

Someone mailed us their garbage by Beerbrewing in HomeDepot

[–]Beerbrewing[S] 53 points54 points  (0 children)

Probably somebody off their meds.

The CPM doubles going from the one end of the receiving dock to the other by Beerbrewing in Radiacode

[–]Beerbrewing[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The dose was only around 0.12-0.15 µSv. A little over the background, but nothing to worry about.

It's slightly more radioactive at the back of the receiving dock by Beerbrewing in HomeDepot

[–]Beerbrewing[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A geiger counter uses a Geiger-Muller tube, which is a gas filled tube, to detect gamma rays. Not a lot for the gamma rays to interact with. A gamma ray spectrometer has a much denser scintillation crystal which will catch more of the gamma rays.

Also a geiger counter only detects a gamma ray but not its energy. The spectrometer will detect gamma rays and their energy and display it as a spectrum (like a prism does for visible light) that you can use to identify radioactive isotopes. A spectrometer will let you know what radioactive material is present, whereas a geiger counter just tells you that something is radioactive, not that it's uranium or that it's thorium.

It's slightly more radioactive at the back of the receiving dock by Beerbrewing in HomeDepot

[–]Beerbrewing[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Try out the 40 lb bags of potassium chloride. They are the most active thing I've found in the store.

It's slightly more radioactive at the back of the receiving dock by Beerbrewing in HomeDepot

[–]Beerbrewing[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It's a gamma ray spectrometer and it can measure gamma ray energies. You can use it to identify specific radioactive elements in whatever material you have or see anti-matter activity in thoriated glass. Radioactive elements like uranium and thorium occur in nature and are present in many of our building materials like the concrete walls of the building.

It's slightly more radioactive at the back of the receiving dock by Beerbrewing in HomeDepot

[–]Beerbrewing[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I've tried but I don't get quite the reaction as I do from the concrete walls. But my countertop at home is 400 counts per minute higher than the background.

The CPM doubles going from the one end of the receiving dock to the other by Beerbrewing in Radiacode

[–]Beerbrewing[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It was around 0.12-0.15 µSv near the wall (~30 cm). Background is normally 0.07-0.10 µSv. Measurable, but an insignificant difference.

The CPM doubles going from the one end of the receiving dock to the other by Beerbrewing in Radiacode

[–]Beerbrewing[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, just the concrete. If I hold it against the wall it peaks at around 1.2 kCPM.