Specialty Chemistry Forums > Citizen Chemist
physics and Chemistry
Minio:
Hi! I'm 16 and I'm not very good speak English, so if I make a mistake, I'm sorry. I have this question: where can I have a radioactive elements, like uran or americ ? I don't want do make a atomic bomb, I'm only interesting this. With greedings. PS. Somebody want to have a new friend who loves physics and new teories, like TOE? :)
Donaldson Tan:
Radioactive elements? You can find them in hospitals, as radioactive substances are employed as tracers or radiation source for medical imaging.
TOE? Theory Of Everything? To-date, nobody has successfully created the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) to relate all the quantum mechanics and Einstein's relativity. Perhaps Set Theory is the most probable TOE as it applies to alot of things. LOL
gregpawin:
If you're looking for easily accessible radioactive elements, you can look for camping lantern mantles or certain types of smoke detectors. Then again, you can find those crazy uranium marbles they sell on e-bay. Back in the day they used to use uranium paint to color the hands on watches so that'd glow in the dark. Those poor people who painted these things by hand "mysteriously" got different kinds of cancers.
Depending on your friend's level of math skill, you can show him the Michael Green narrated Nova series about the story of string/M theory http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000ZG0TA/qid=1091031936/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl74/104-4203464-2355953?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846. Or you can read a more thorough treatment of it written by Green and Ed Witten http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521357527/qid=1091031077/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-4203464-2355953?v=glance&s=books
jdurg:
They never painted watch hands with uranium paint. Never. I think you have the uranium glazes used on Fiestaware confused with the radium paint used on watch hands. ;) ;D Radium is highly radioactive, so it is easily able to excite the phosphorescent compound mixed with the radium chloride and cause the compound to glow. If it was glowing from the radiation alone, then anyone near it would be dead. :P
gregpawin:
I stand corrected... but what is this Fiestaware? and were they still partying at the end of the day?
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