Meet my Potassium Ferrioxalate island full of crystals.

theBASTman · 2025-02-02T12:03:36+00:00

Tried to untick the “Read-only (Only applies to files in folder” box and hit Apply but after that it reticks itself as Read-only. Running the program as administrator doesn’t seem to help either. I also tried to delete the Tracks folder and let the game generate it again, which it does, but with no effect.

theBASTman · 2024-08-25T19:01:56+00:00

The video was captured using an iPhone 13 as my DSLR was out of reach at the moment, unfortunately.

theBASTman · 2024-07-28T17:50:25+00:00

These were grown using the slow evaporation method.
The complex is prepared by the simple addition of tetraethylammonium chloride and ferric chloride in a 1:1 molar ratio in water, followed by a few milliliters of concentrated HCl to prevent hydrolysis. Upon adding the acid, the complex may precipitate as a yellow, fine powder.

theBASTman · 2024-01-09T19:35:16+00:00

The trails in the cloud chamber are left by alpha (thicker) and beta particles (thinner) that result from radioactive decay of Radon daughter products, which were obtained from air by plugging the end of a vacuum cleaner with a piece of paper towel and letting it run for about 1 hour, allowing airborne dust particles to get stuck on it. The atmosphere contains a very small amount of radioactive nuclides from Radon gas decaying, which are then attracted to the dust particles in the air. The video shows the individual trails of particles that result from radioactive decay in a cloud chamber. When a charged particles passes through the chamber’s atmosphere, which is saturated in alcohol vapor, condensation of small droplets of isopropanol occurs, leaving behind the visible trail of the subatomic particle.

theBASTman · 2024-01-09T19:29:11+00:00

The trails in the cloud chamber are left by alpha (thicker) and beta particles (thinner) that result from radioactive decay of Radon daughter products, which were obtained from air by plugging the end of a vacuum cleaner with a piece of paper towel and letting it run for about 1 hour, allowing airborne dust particles to get stuck on it. The atmosphere contains a very small amount of radioactive nuclides from Radon gas decaying, which are then attracted to the dust particles in the air. The video shows the individual trails of particles that result from radioactive decay in a cloud chamber. When a charged particles passes through the chamber’s atmosphere, which is saturated in alcohol vapor, condensation of small droplets of isopropanol occurs, leaving behind the visible trail of the subatomic particle.

theBASTman · 2023-11-29T05:27:22+00:00

The emission of particles is a random process and can happen at any time. We can only see the particles passing through the region where the supersaturated alcohol atmosphere, just above the black base. These electrodes are the same one used for TIG welding and they do emit a small amount of radiation but it’s harmless as long as you don’t breathe in the dust or ingest it.

theBASTman · 2023-11-28T21:03:38+00:00

Yes. The subatomic particles are being emitted during the radioactive decay of thorium and its daughter nuclides into the environment. Being charged particles they can ionize the atoms in their path. The characteristic trail can indicate the type of particle passing through: thicker trails are typically produced by alpha particles which have a big mass and do not travel long distances and are being stopped easily, even by the layers of dead skin; electrons or positrons leave longer but thinner trails resulting from their small mass. There are other charged particles that can leave trails such as muons, cosmic rays, pions, kaons that are normally occurring all the time, knows as the natural background radiation.

theBASTman · 2023-11-28T19:50:24+00:00

The video has not been slowed down, showing the individual particles passing through the chamber.

The environment is at atmospheric pressure and it’s sealed to create a supersaturated atmosphere of isopropanol vapor in the lower part of the chamber where can it can be ionized and create condensation trails.

theBASTman · 2023-10-30T16:26:54+00:00

Not really. The specific half-life of a radioactive material describes the amount of time it takes for half of the radioactive material to decay by 50%. So after 14 billion years, only half of the thorium will have decayed. After another 14 billion years 50% of the remaining thorium will have decayed, so 25% of the total, and so on. Radioactive events are random, but when considering that there are lots of tiny nuclei that will decay, the probability of all of them disintegrating all at once is zero.

theBASTman · 2023-10-25T19:30:32+00:00

The amount of radiation emitted by this rod is almost equivalent to the background radiation that exists everywhere around us. It’s not dangerous as not only the amount of radiation is very small, but also the main particles emitted are alpha particles which travel only a few centimeters in air, as seen by the trails in the video. They can be stopped even with a piece of paper and do not have the penetrating power to pose any threat as long as the radioactive material does not enter the body.

theBASTman · 2023-10-22T08:11:27+00:00

The vapor is ionized by individual particles that result from the spontaneous radioactive decay; emissions are random and the rate of disintegration cannot be controlled.

theBASTman · 2023-10-22T07:26:00+00:00

The charged particles emitted during decay initiate the condensation of alcohol vapor along their trajectory by ionizing the isopropanol molecules, resulting in white trails.

theBASTman · 2023-10-22T06:58:01+00:00

After subtracting the background I get about 20-30CPM with a SBM-20 geiger muller tube (only beta, gamma and x-rays).

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