Exciting! Safe! My childhood dreams come true
by noel on Apr 16 2009 (1836 Views)My discovery of this awesome toy kit posted on Retro Thing (via: Boing Boing/via: Oak Ridge Associated University) is motivation enough for me to drain my budding IRA account just to afford it.
This kit pretty much sums up everything a young, aspiring nuclear chemist could ever want. According to these sources, it contains: FOUR types of uranium ore (must be a deluxe kit, right?), a couple alpha, beta, and gamma sources, a cloud chamber, an electroscope, a spinthariscope, a Geiger counter, a comic book, and get this, a government manuel titled “Prospecting for Uranium.” Sweet.
Despite its awesomeness and foresight, it was only available for purchase between 1950 and 1951. The company explains its short lived glory by the rather high price tag at the time ($50.00). Today, the rarity of this kit means that the it can go for about 100x of the original price on the collectables market!
Now, if you would excuse me, I need to pick up and retry my failed could chamber project.
Noel
Oh, to have that kit now I’ve had all my children and there’s no reason to fear the odd alpha or two.
There’s a surprising amount of radiation in things like Coleman lantern mantles (thorium) and even potassium chloride salt replacement.
About thirty years ago, I found a bottle of uranium nitrate that had sat around the lab since the 1930s. It had been used to make tissue preservatives. By 1975, the (originally) reagent grade uranium had accumulated enough daughters that it was hotter than hell. A Geiger counter would begin getting interested eight or ten feet away.
Uranium for a kid?
You should check out the book “The Radioactive Boyscout.” Its about a young kid who does some nuclear chemistry in his backyard with the help of “The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments” written in 1960…and definitely would never make it to bookshelves if it was written today. You can find a PDF of the Golden Book online if you google search it….very interesting stuff in there!
For those that do find the Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, please do not perform those experiments if you are not a trained chemists. Some of the stuff in there is wholly unsafe.
Where can I get the Iranian version?
-Eric T.
http://www.jazdchemicals.com
A retired professor of my department recently confessed a similar kit of chemicals was a his first motivation to become a chemist. He also mentioned that several of his peers claimed the same.
Wow – that’s a beautiful set! Regarding the cloud chamber, there are actually several DIY versions around on the net:
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/~adf4/cloud.html
http://bizarrelabs.com/cloud.htm