Why you never dismatle an ionization fire alarm !

I do, my unscientific aquintance, you said:
"By the way Am241 is Plutonium 238 bombarded with x-rays, this then transmutates into Am241."

Whereas the stuff I found said
"Americium is
produced when plutonium absorbs neutrons in nuclear
reactors and nuclear weapons tests."

 

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I'm not sure exactly what you disagree about, but guthrie is right about the formation of Am-241. To go from Pu-238 to Am-241 you need 2 neutrons and 1 proton, which aren't going to come from x-rays.

 

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Yes, that was a true story! By the way If you want Thorium go get some older gas lantern mantles. They are quite active!! Uranium is harder to obtain but can be bought at a photography store and or a chemical supply company as Uranyl Nitrate and is used to fog b/w film.
Radium and Radium III Chloride paint are impossible to get now! but Tritrium and Deuterium are used in the sign industry for making scintallophosphors on glow in the dark industrial signs.


****No wellcookedfetus you cannot create any measurable voltage with what you are describing! It won't work. You would need a $$$$$meter that would be sensitive enought to pick up fA's (thats femtoamperes). even that may not be sensitive enough.

 

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sorry, Geodesic and Guthie I have been told it can be produced by a gamma ray burst via Co60 or more commonly by the Pu238:Be thermal neutron method. (Be) --Beryllium.

 

Gamma rays arent x-rays, and have you seen a gamma ray burst recently? You dont want to be anywhere near one when it happens.
I cant immediately think how Cobalt 60 changes to americium, given that americium has over 4 times as many neutrons and Cobalt 60 is the radioactive form of Cobalt and decays via a beta and gamma to nickel 60.

All I can find about americium/ beryllium is that gammas given off by the americium cause the emmission of neutrons from the beryllium, ie its a combined neutron source. Maybe thats what was in the lab I was working in.

 

Sorry I have to disagree with you on Gamma rays and X-rays. Both are the same rays except one ray comes from electrical excitation and the other is naturally occuring. Both rays are the same, they are both extreamly high energy photons!!!

You again Guthie don't seem to read the previous posts! Co60 is basically the source for gamma rays to change Pu238 into Am241 for a non thermal neutron reaction.

The thermal neutron version of the Pu238-Am241 reaction uses Beryllium to change Pu238 by absorbing neutrons as you say. The result is a bight blue-white flash and a Gamma radiation burst and a tonne of heat. The beryllium doesn't change much in the reaction but the PU238 becomes Am241.

 

I'm gonna agree with Guthrie on the X-ray-gamma ray thing. They are two different wavelenths.

 

Ahhh, now your making more sense, though not much. Have you tried using the everyday scientific terms for things? A gamma ray burst is generally an astronomical event, the exact causes of which are not really known. They can be detected coming form all over the sky, and are possibly due to supergiant stars becoming black holes. Or something like that.
http://www.gardner-webb.edu/GWU/NaturalSci/physics/phy104/grb.htm

And again you seem to be ignoring physics, ie that you cant change one elment form another by bombarding it with gamma rays, or can you? Do they react with the protons and form neutrons? Do you have any references at all for the use of Co60 to transmute plutonium into Americium?

As for gamma and x-rays, they are on a spectrum,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum
the difference being the energy and produciton method, as you say. Except I wouldnt say that electrical exitation doesnt occur naturally. Bear also in mind that its the frequency that determines what the photons interact with. (i think, its a while since I've done anything related to this.)

 

ahhh Guthie you are not reading again!

Gamma radiation and X-rays are on the same high energy wavelengths sorry, and physicists treat them as such since they are both penitrating radiations. !! Gamma radiation comes through nuclear excitation and are often reffered to as Hard X-rays. sure Some types of gamma radiation are beyond H.Xrays interms of the wavelegths but they are often found in an atomic bomb blast or from black holes.
X-rays are formed from electrical excitation on earth ... Wasn't talking about blackholes! they are totally different phenomenon.

Co-60 cold neutron transfer exisits but I can't give you any info on it other than a quote from CNRC "Gamma and x rays were also found to cause effects in air and materials making them emmit radiation and changing their atomic structures, being the product of radioactive elements and x-ray tubes". . You are right about the Be/Pu238 reaction thought! It is the best way to transmutate Pu238 to Am241 although it is highly dangerous.

 

"Gamma radiation and X-rays are on the same high energy wavelengths sorry, and physicists treat them as such since they are both penitrating radiations."

Correct

"Gamma radiation comes through nuclear excitation and are often reffered to as Hard X-rays"

No. You do that and someone will one day cofuse the 2 and zap somebody. They have different names for a reason, such as different energy levels.


"X-rays are formed from electrical excitation on earth ... Wasn't talking about blackholes! they are totally different phenomenon."

Indeed, though x-rays are also formed in space by various means, why else do we have an x-ray telescope or 2 up in orbit. Its just your use of "gamma ray bursts" as a tagline is normally applied to an astronomical phenomena, thus, your statements using that were confusing.

""Gamma and x rays were also found to cause effects in air and materials making them emmit radiation and changing their atomic structures, being the product of radioactive elements and x-ray tubes". "

But that doesnt mention Co60.

 

Well most physicists I know lump x-rays and Gamma rays into the same catagory. both are penetrating photons and are essentially the same. both are very hard to discern without very specialized equipment.
Hard X-rays are also considered as soft Gamma. "like the hard x-rays used to x-ray the hulls of ships are basically gamma rays and are 500 to 750KeV in energy."

 

Well, therein lies the problem. Statements like
""like the hard x-rays used to x-ray the hulls of ships are basically gamma rays and are 500 to 750KeV in energy.""
are essentially unscientific. They say x is actually y, but we'll call it x, even though its y, and it doesnt matter if anyone gets confused.
Its a bit like confusing infra red with Ultra violet. theyre different, but you try telling them apart, though its abit easier than x-rays and gamma.

 

ah yea, Heat energy and UVA/UVB radiation are easily discerned. We are talking about a spectrum of energy that is so closely related they behave essentially the same way. The only difference is the amount of energy they contain. which translates into penetrating power.
very hard X-rays are often reffered to as soft gamma. +750KeV catagory.

Right, about the Co60 Pu238 method to change Pu238 to Am241 I cannot find the source for my original statemant. I do know about the thermal neutron metod of conversion but I was under the impression another safer method existed.
None the less I did a scintillometer test of my 1.0uCi sample and got 38,678CPM. =38,003 CPM of pure alpha particle radiation.
I scared the shit out of the Atomic energy officer at my university but suggested I flog it to the department for $70. Gee no takers yet. Funny thing.

 

That's kind of like saying graphite and diamond are the same they're both carbon, or, a better analogy, Cl-35 and Cl-37 are the same because their chemical properties are almost identical.

 

Exactly Geodesic.

And as for your radioactive sample Hideki Matsumoto, maybe you'd better just seal it up in concrete and throw it into a big hole in the ground. Or else try to sell it on E-bay, saying it would be the perfect start to a dirty bomb

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Seal my radioactive source up>? NEVER! That was a good find! It makes an excellent test source! I use tweezers to handle it and proper gloves! I wonder if I could maybe use it for a micronuclear cell. Hmmmm? Maybe I could trade it for some Co60? hmm. I woulden't mind have some high energy gamma around!

 

Whooooooaaaaa there. If your wanting high energy gamma you might like to start thinking about shielding.

 

You do realise high energy gamma is what is used to kill cancer cells in radiotherapy? And you're unlikely to find much useful shielding against high energy gamma, unless a nice thick concrete wall?
By the way, did you know that concrete emits gamma rays? It's because it contains K40, which decays by beta+, which then annihilates to produce to gamma rays.

 

Concrete emmiting gamma rays? really? no insult intended but I have never come across this even with a high sensitivity NaI scintillometer. I have got the standard background counts here up to 0.08-0.22uSv/hr but nothing that would indicate this phenomenon.
However KCl registers this K40 phenomemenon quite well

 

I never said it emitted a lot - think about it. Concrete is pretty good at absorbing gamma, and you're obviously not going to get as much as from a pure pootassium salt. It was just a factoid.