From: constant@gn.ecn.purdue.edu (Tino)
Newsgroups: sci.environment
Subject: Re: Are Your Light Bulbs Radioactive? (Gatorade results)
Date: 14 Sep 92 22:49:01 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network

In article <STEINMAN.92Sep14120056@hawk.is.morgan.com> steinman@is.morgan.com (Jan Steinman) writes:
>      >Teach your children how to use a geiger counter!
>
>      Good idea.  But do not stop there.  Suggest that they put a
>      bottle of GatorAde (sorry you folks at UF, any of the
>      "replacement" sport drinks) next to it.  <quite a nice effect,
>      BTW> Compare to CF bulb.  Look for any warning label on the
>      respective packages.  A learning experience!  Also might compare
>      to a banana and your own body.
>
>   I didn't think Mr. Carr knew what he was talking about, but was
>   unwilling to reply without some data...
>
>I counted Gatorade this weekend. Since I don't know offhand the decay
>products of potassium (my college texts are 3,000 miles away), I
>opened the lid and positioned the alpha window about 4 cm from the
>liquid surface, in the hope of capturing as many ionizing events as
>possible. The label claims it contains a total of 100mg of potassium.
>Here are the results:
>
>	Gator	20mg K	banana	normal	nuke	flight
>day	14.74	15.23	15.71	15.69	56.11	404.1
>night	14.35	15.09	15.39	15.36
>
>Once again, no statistical significance, let alone "quite a nice
>effect". My guess is that solar activity was lower while counting the
>Gatorade than with the other samples -- over years of background
>monitoring, I've found solar activity to be the greatest corelant to
>increased bacground count.
>(For those who have not followed: "20mg K" was two multi-vitimin
>tablets, "banana" was an unpeeled banana, "normal" was free-air,
>"nuke" was a timed measurement during a nuclear plant tour, and
>"flight" was a timed count during a cross-country commercial airline
>flight.)
>
>Other possible problems: if the radioactive potassium isotope is
>primarily an alpha emitter, only the K in the top few cm of the bottle

Uh, sorry, K40 gives off a 1.32 eV betas and 1.46 eV gammas. No alphas here.

>would produce alphas that could escape to be counted. Depending on the
>energy, beta emissions might be counted from the entire solution, or
>they might not.
>Either way, I think this exposes Mr. Carr's "quite a nice effect"
>statement as crude, uninformed eco-baiting. Anyone have dissenting
>experimental data that can salvage Mr. Carr's honor and reputation? :-)
>I'm willing to admit my counter or my methods are faulty, given
>adequate proof...

I just got in on this thread, but a few people are misinformed. Potassium  
occurs naturally in bananas, Gatorade, etc., but K40, the only naturally-
occuring radioactive potassium isotope, is only 0.0118% of the potassium.
The samples you have (banana, etc) will NOT show any effect on a hand-held
GM counter. There should be no statistical significance between any of these
readings. If you REALLY wanted to find these miniscule effects, you could try
a Germanium detector (many thousands of dollars) over a period of a few days,
and you could spot the K40 peaks. 

Though these items contain very very small amounts of radioactive isotopes,
they are far outweighed by the beneficial effects of the minerals. Without
potassium, you die.

Who is this Mr. Carr? Has he ever taken a fundamental nuclear physics course?

Tino
-- 
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"The nuclear scientist will prepare the bed on which mankind must lie; and
 if mankind doesn't fit - well, that will be just too bad for mankind."
                                      - Aldous Huxley