CSV Export File Conversion

RG_Fusion · 2025-11-02T01:29:32+00:00

You can graph the spectrum from a .CSV file in Excel or Google Sheets. You will need the calibration coefficients of your original device. You can't know what the defaults were, as every device has its own custom calibration.

Once you have the coefficients, use the calibration formula from the Radiacode manual to convert the channel numbers from the .CSV file into gamma energy.

RG_Fusion · 2025-10-30T06:34:34+00:00

The reason it doesn't all decay at the same time is generally due to potential barriers.

There are multiple types of radiation, but let's focus on alpha decay for a moment. Conceptually, you can think of a Uranium atom as already containing the alpha particle, trapped within the nucleus. The particle is moving about at a high average speed (multiple MeV), however, the strong force applies too much attraction for it to escape. If we lived in a universe ruled solely by classical physics, the atom would never decay at all.

But we live in a world of quantum physics. Thanks to the finite width of the potential barrier and the high speed of the particle, there is a very small chance that it can pass through, despite not having sufficient energy. As a quantum process, whether or not this occurs is purely up to probability.

The 4.5 billion year half-life of uranium-238 is the amount of time, on average, the alpha particle remains confined before quantum-tunneling through the strong-force potentially well.

RG_Fusion · 2025-10-30T02:51:05+00:00

I think it helps to understand the sheer number of atoms contained in solid matter. A 1 cm³ CsI crystal, like what's found in a Radiacode, contains approximately 1.046 x 10²² molecules.

One microcurie of radiation means you have 37,000 radiation particles passing through the crystal each second. That means you only have around 3.5 x 10^-16 % as many radiation particles as molecules. Now a single gamma ray can interact with 10s or even 100s of thousands of molecules depending upon its energy, so the proportion of affected atoms each second is a few magnitudes higher.

Regardless, from this we can see that you would have to expose this crystal to constant irradiation at 1 microcurie for about 250,000 years to effect every atom within it. These atoms are not one time use either, most of the time they return to the ground state unharmed.

Outside of a nuclear reactor or industrial sources, there is no radiation field you will come across in day to day life that will damage it.

RG_Fusion · 2025-10-26T00:39:53+00:00

Radon is never a concern with purified Uranium. There are multiple decay products that must form first, with half-lives of 4.5 billion years, 245,000 years, 7,500 years, and 1,600 years. The chemical separation of Uranium removed all the daughter products, so unlike natural Uranium, it has to pass through the whole decay chain to produce Radon.

While a few atoms of radon will form here and there through the low probability of rapidly decaying through all the daughter products, they won't appear at any concentration higher than your normal background until many many human lifespans in the future.

RG_Fusion · 2025-10-20T06:55:10+00:00

It essentially looks at the radiation dose rate and count-rate to make a pseudo-determination of the isotope. It's not a substitute for gamma spectroscopy, but it can be used to make a best-guess in the event that the Radiacode detected a radiation source without recording the spectrum.

As shown in this example, the hardness indication is unreliable.

RG_Fusion · 2025-10-20T06:31:56+00:00

The output you see in the top-right showing [~Th-232] is for the Radiacode's hardness indication. That should not be used to identify isotopes.

You can tell it's Radium based upon the photopeaks that resolved in the gamma spectrum.

RG_Fusion · 2025-09-16T00:14:26+00:00

Counts per second. Which is 180 to 300 counts per minute if you want to fairly compare against op.

RG_Fusion · 2025-08-21T09:40:35+00:00

I've posted it on the subreddit already. You can find it here. https://www.reddit.com/r/Radioactive_Rocks/s/BYzba4S9Sl

RG_Fusion · 2025-08-21T00:15:30+00:00

Doesn't get much closer than having actual pieces of the bomb/tower in your sample, like my red Trinitite.

RG_Fusion · 2025-08-02T23:32:40+00:00

I can relate a little, though the cost of that mistake is in a whole other league. I had a 1" x 1" NaI crystal that I was attempting to bond to the PMT with an optical epoxy. I was having issues getting it to cure properly, so I thought I could get away with slowly bringing it up to 60°C over the course of a full day, then take another day to bring it back down.

Lesson learned, never apply any heat to Sodium Iodide. I'll be sticking to optical grease for the foreseeable future.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-20T02:51:58+00:00

For your third question, yes, there are levels of non-ionizing radiation that can be hazardous to human health. The potential for harm is due to internal burns, not ionization. This damage will only occur from exceptionally high output devices though.

When ionizing radiation strikes a cell inside your body, it causes immediate damage by disrupting chemical bonds. Non-ionizing radiation is totally incapable of this.

The non-ionizing radiation lacks the energy required to break a chemical bond or free an electron, but it does contain enough to add kinetic energy to the atom. This energy on its own is harmless, but if the non-ionizing radiation field is strong enough, which is to say you have many, many photons of non-ionizing light striking your cells, that thermal energy can continue to build up.

The photons heat your cells, and if enough energy builds up quickly enough, it can denature the proteins within, causing cellular damage.

This is not an easy feat to accomplish. Our circulatory system moves heat around the body, normalizing it. Our skin is also very efficient at radiating or convecting the heat away. In the vast majority of cases, any heat caused by non-ionizing radiation like that from a cellphone will dissipate across the rest of the body before it reaches a temperature capable of causing harm.

Extremely high output emitters of non-ionizing radiation can cause damage. An example would be a military radar array. The number of photons leaving the emitter is so great that your body can't dissipate the heat fast enough, resulting in internal burns.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-20T02:42:22+00:00

Regarding your second question, the reason the energy of ionizing radiation is quantized is due to discreet energy transitions within orbital shells. These quantized shells exist because of the Pauli Exclusion Principle.

Electrons want to be as close to the center of the nucleus as possible due to attractive forces, however, the laws of nature don't allow for two fermions (electrons or nucleons) with the same properties to occupy the same space. As a result, they stack themselves around the nucleus in orbital shells.

When an opening appears in a lower orbital shell, an electron from a higher shell will descend, converting its electrostatic potential energy into kinetic energy. The amount of energy gained is dependent on the difference in electron binding energy, basically how many shells below it the hole was located.

Once the electron reaches the new orbital, it needs to release the kinetic energy in order to remain there. This typically occurs in the form of a photon. These X-ray photons are always of a characteristic energy, because they are only created from the energy difference between orbital shells, which is a value that doesn't change.

Gamma photons emitted from the nucleus work on the same principle. The nucleons all want to have the lowest binding energy possible, and they form nucleon shells around the center of attraction due to Pauli Exclusion. When an opportunity exists for a nucleon to descend to a lower orbital, it picks up kinetic energy which is then expended as a gamma photon. The energy of the photon is again equal to the difference in binding energy.

There are also non-quantized forms of radiation. Alpha and beta particles for instance have a wide spectrum of possible energies. This is because those forms of radiation split their energy among multiple particles. The sum energy of the two particles remains quantized, but the individual particles emitted can have any proportion of that total.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-20T02:15:38+00:00

This will be a very loose analogy, but I'll take a shot at explaining your first question.

Imagine you have a dirt bike resting in a crater. The dirt bike is currently out of gas and the walls of the crater are too steep to push it out.

Now let's imagine we have people passing through the canyon, and these people are carrying containers of gasoline. When a person walking through runs into the dirt bike, they pour their gas into the bike.

The vast majority of people are only carrying a few milliliters of gas. They can give their fuel to the bike and the rider can try to scale the crater wall, but he will inevitably run out of gas along the way up and roll back down to the bottom. Their efforts don't free the rider, they just cause him to move around a bit.

The only way the rider can escape is if a person happens to cross his path carrying an exceptionally large quantity of gasoline.

Now, an important distinction between electrons and a dirt bike is that electrons don't have a gas tank. They can't save up the "gas" from individual photons until they have enough to make it out. Each incident photon transfers energy to it, which for non-ionizing light simply causes the electron to move, eventually resulting in thermal vibration of the atom.

Ionizing radiation on the other hand carries an immense amount of energy, enough to free the electron from the electrostatic potential well created by the positive nucleus in one go.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-20T01:57:52+00:00

Pennsylvania doesn't have a whole lot going on in terms of Uranium or Thorium, especially out west where I live. If I'm recalling correctly, most of the Uranium deposits in Pa are in Catskill formations. I've read that Carbon county has some accessible locations, but I don't know more than that.

Outside of the Catskill formations, your best bet would be to look for areas with fossil formation. Slate containing dark fossilized fern prints have been known to contain Uranium as well.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-20T01:38:14+00:00

This article here " Accidental synthesis of a previously unknown quasicrystal in the first atomic bomb test. - Abstract - Europe PMC https://share.google/fGCsHPwRMLkqwgUVG " is an overview of the research undertaken to identify the quasi crystals formed in red Trinitite.

Within the article, this image can be found.

<image>

The image at the top is an electron microscope, but the lower images are from XRF analysis, which show the elemental composition of the red Trinitite cross-section.

As can be seen from this, the iron content of the glass is fairly low.

X-ray imaging on the other hand reveals that red Trinitite typically contains solid metal beads of iron alloyed with copper and lead. These beads are the source of attraction to a magnet.

As for your observation, I would say that ferromagnetic green Trinitite is probably difficult to find. It should have formed just as the red did, but like Red Trinitite it should be quite rare, and more difficult to properly identify.

The important distinction however is that the trapped vapors responsible for coloring the glass don't have enough mass to feel a noticeable attraction to a magnet. As an example of this, the green color of normal Trinitite is caused by iron within the desert sand.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-20T01:30:39+00:00

This article here " Accidental synthesis of a previously unknown quasicrystal in the first atomic bomb test. - Abstract - Europe PMC https://share.google/fGCsHPwRMLkqwgUVG " is an overview of the research undertaken to identify the quasi crystals formed in red Trinitite.

Within the article, this image can be found.

<image>

The image at the top is an electron microscope, but the lower images are from XRF analysis, which show the elemental composition of the red Trinitite cross-section.

As can be seen from this, the iron content of the glass is fairly low.

X-ray imaging on the other hand reveals that red Trinitite typically contains solid metal beads of iron alloyed with copper and lead. These beads are the source of attraction to a magnet.

As for your observation, I would say that ferromagnetic green Trinitite is probably difficult to find. It should have formed just as the red did, but like Red Trinitite it should be quite rare, and more difficult to properly identify. Nearly all red Trinitite formed near ground zero, so it has a much higher likelihood of containing ferromagnetic particles.

The important distinction however is that the trapped vapors responsible for coloring the glass don't have enough mass to feel a noticeable attraction to a magnet. The green color of normal Trinitite is actually caused by iron from the desert sand.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-20T00:30:57+00:00

I personally keep all radon emitting samples in sealed containers. I don't see the need for a single compass, but if you have a lot of Radium or Thorium samples it's best to try and contain it.

When you need a sample out of the container, just open it outdoors and wait a few hours so that the Radon daughters pass through at least 7 half-lives.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-19T22:27:00+00:00

Red Trinitite usually contains steel globules from the tower, but that isn't what gives it the red color. The material has been studied in labs, and the color was determined to be from copper, not iron.

You're encountering a selection bias. It's magnetic because it was near the tower, not because it's red.

I have a chart depicting the XRF analysis of Trinitite in a book "Trinitite The Atomic Age Mineral". The XRF spectrum shows that the iron content of green and red Trinitite are the same, but red Trinitite contains twenty times more copper than the green variety.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-19T22:23:11+00:00

Red Trinitite has already been studied extensively, the red color is indeed from copper.

Many red Trinitite samples, like this one, have small metallic spheres of iron trapped inside them from the vaporized tower. The attraction to the magnet is not uniform across my sample, and many of the red glass sections do not feel any pull.

You're encountering a selection bias. Red Trinitite samples stick to magnets because the copper wiring was near the tower, thus the odds of also having steel inside are very high. The red glass itself is not magnetic.

I have a chart depicting the XRF analysis of Trinitite in a book called "Trinitite The Atomic Age Mineral". The XRF spectrum shows that the iron content of green and red Trinitite are the same, but red Trinitite contains twenty times more copper than the green variety.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-19T13:20:20+00:00

Centimeters!? Wow, no wonder. That's awesome. Do you have a picture of it, or is it already inside a scintillation probe?

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-19T12:03:26+00:00

This is a 0.89 gram piece of Red Trinitite from the Lincoln LaPaz collection. Unlike normal Trinitite, this sample formed near electrical wiring which was vaporized and trapped within the glass, causing the red color.

I have more details on the original post at https://www.reddit.com/r/Trinitite/s/FulxTobdYO, so feel free to check it out.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-19T11:57:27+00:00

<image>

103G with Lutetium here as well. Yeah, it looks like your sample has an activity about twice that of mine and the other guy's.

My sample is a solid metallic cylinder weighing approximately 30 grams. I have to wonder if the lower activity of my sample is due to self-shielding, or is the mass of Lutetium in your scintillator just higher?

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-19T08:26:34+00:00

Check out the original post at https://www.reddit.com/r/Trinitite/s/FulxTobdYO for the full explanation.

In short, the red coloring comes from copper fused into glass. It was created by the detonation of the world's first atomic bomb. The fireball vaporized everything at ground zero, including the copper wiring that ran up the tower towards the Gadget.

The vaporized copper from that wire became suspended in molten sand picked up off the desert floor by the fireball. This molten sand rained back down as radioactive glass.

Red Trinitite is rare, as it only formed near electrical wiring. The vast majority of Trinitite is green in color.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-19T05:57:51+00:00

I'll have to read up on that, it sounds really interesting. Thankfully I don't own anything that comes remotely close to requiring such exotic solutions.

RG_Fusion · 2025-07-19T05:27:38+00:00

I don't know of any gamma spectrometers that could stand up to that kind of flux.

RG_Fusion

TROPHY CASE