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Comment by labster | Hacker News Reader

I’ve got a small collection of uranium glass. It’s always fun to crank up the black light when friends come over. And it looks great at Halloween.

I have a couple pieces with manganese iirc which glows a faint orange. But it doesn’t compare to those nice emission lines off the uranium.

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It's fun sticking a Geiger counter inside a uranium glass bowl and watching the CPM tick up... Really unnerves people. We fear radiation way more than we should, going outside and being exposed to the sun is way more dangerous than licking a uranium glass.

Heh, yeah. People sort of reflexively back away from the china cabinet. The toxicity of uranium is rather like lead: big heavy atom with lots of bonding available but really slow to move. But no one cowers from leaded crystal (except perhaps the State of California).

The State of California can bite my grandparents' vintage leaded crystal decanters without the Jameo or Glenlivet 12.

Edit: lead.. mmm. Yeah, I probably should only use them to serve, rather than store, to prevent bottle-chuggers.

https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/it-dangerous-store-alcohol...

Also, wash your hands like after leaded soldering when handling the exteriors of alcoholic beverage containers:

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2019-06-2...

I made a Geiger counter with 50 tubes and show here what happens when you put a Uranium-glazed plate on it:

https://youtu.be/Iphv7i3IRRU

Good job. I thought the watch dials would be more radioactive than the plate.

I'm a watchmaker, and know the radioactivity of old dials, and hands, are not dangerous unless snorting the inside of watches, but it is still on my mind when Servicing.

Old Westclock dials/hands supposedly are higher in radioactivity than other brands.

I've been thinking about building a Geiger counter in the cost is not to high.

Pilots, flight attendants, and passengers on the Concorde.

Concrete.

Radon.

What do you mean? Could you elaborate?

https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-sources-and-doses#av...

I found no mention (cmd+f) of “concrete” or “concorde” there; I still don’t follow.

The Concorde cruised at higher altitude than most commercial planes, thus you had less protection from the atmosphere during the flight and received higher amounts radiation from cosmic rays.

Then again it flew for a shorter duration, so I don't know which method of travel exposed you to higher accumulated radiation.

Sometimes fly ash is added to concrete as a pozzolan. It is produced by burning coal and is slightly radioactive.

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