#uranium ore

[allie-leth]

I just found out that you can, just, like, purchase uranium ore for fun and it's like $20.

I could be the proud new owner of uranium ore for the cost of lunch.

[stone-cold-groove]

Atomic Energy Mineralogy Kit. You can experiment with atomic energy. Page from the Johnson Smith & Co. novelties catalog - 1955.

[reddpenn]

I got to play with some uranium ore today!

Video transcript:

Okay, so here's something cool! This is a piece of uranium ore. This is not a piece from my collection, this is actually a piece from a collection that I'm getting to view here. Very neat! So yeah, that's uranium right there.

You might hear some clicks, and that is my geiger counter, so we're going to test how radioactive this uranium is. So this is just the base atmospheric radiation that's in this room. And let's see what happens when we get it next to that uranium.

Aw, there it goes!

Yeah, I'd say that's radioactive.

And for anyone concerned, this is still completely within reasonable dosage limits. Obviously you don't want to, like, eat this, or have it next to your skin for extended periods of time, but it is perfectly safe for me to, you know, pick up and handle.

It's giving off... what is it giving off? Let's let it tick up here and see what it gets to. About five microsieverts? It can probably go a little higher, we've clocked it a little higher before.

Eh, about five and a half microsieverts.

So again, completely safe for me to handle. But measurably very radioactive! So that's a very cool piece that I got to view today. I think it would be fun to have some of this in my collection at some point. Maybe I'll see if I can get the owner to sell it to me! Here's hoping.

Anyway, I just thought that was cool and wanted to share!

[happynuke]

The defeater of my GMC 600+; this thin slice of almost unphotographable Uraninite that really likes to throw off the colour balance on cameras. It's difficult to see, but there are tiny little botryoidal spheres in the area where its black colouring is most intense.

Inside of plastic box reading, 10cm away (GQ 600+):

3,850cpm

Exposed, out of box reading, 10cm away:

42,100cpm

Right on top of mineral!:

188,000cpm

Unfortunately, the geiger counter is completely overwhelmed by the activity from this piece and is dropping counts after a minute of reading, so it's likely a bit higher than the numbers written. I will measure again when I buy my Radiacode 103.

I have named my new rock Hot Slice.

[jadewolf-writes]

New Safe Confinement, mini-edition.

After running my little piece of Moab uranium ore under the Geiger counter last week and watching it go a little crazy, I decided that maybe keeping it in the tiny plastic baggie it came in from the shop wasn't the best idea.

So, I ordered some thick glass specimen jars and they finally arrived. Put on my heavy duty particulate respirator, took my little baggie full of radioactive rock outside where there was plenty of ventilation, and carefully transferred it from the plastic baggie to the jar.

Turns out there was a fair amount of dust in the bag, so I was glad I opted for a mask. While this uranium ore generally only emits alpha particles, which are reasonably safe as they cannot penetrate the skin, they CAN still be dangerous if ingested or inhaled. Hence the mask and the open area for the transfer.

It's now safely contained in the jar, and properly labeled for safety in case I keel over dead one day and somebody's gotta go through my stuff.

I ran the Geiger counter over it in the jar afterwards and it barely blipped. Certainly nothing dramatic like it did before. A good, practical example of how easy it is to block alpha particles.

So, I'm gonna call that a job well done.

[electronicsquid]

Dorothy Madigan reading about uranium ore in Life magazine while at the beauty salon

(Lisa Larsen. 1955)

[un-ionizetheradlab]

"mom says it's my turn with the uranium ore!"

[mineralsandsomerocks]

Autunite on Limonitized Matrix displaying fluorescence

Locality: Le Boucheron, Davignac, Corrèze, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France

375nm (Longwave) UV Light