Tom as a public speaker was engaging, funny and easy to understand so the presentation he gave on radiation was interesting and I learned a great deal. Mostly We spoke about how the uses for elements like Raydon, Radium and Plutonium where not known to have negative effects in the past and where used in everyday life even consumed which lead to radiation poisoning or cancers in the people effected.
Radio Active elements are constantly slowly changing its chemical make up therefore are unstable. All radio active elements will decay into lead it is this decay process that lets out radioactive particles and can harm humans.
The process if decaying into lead that these elements go through involves a process called half life. it is the time in years that it takes to reduce that element in half. the shorter half life the more dangerous the element is because it gives off more radiation.
1Ib or Uranium -238 has a half life of 4.5 x 10 to the 9th years or 4.5 billion years
There are three different types of Radioactive particles:
Alpha which has the least amount of energy and you could easily stop it with cardboard or paper, it has 2 protons and 2 neutrons
Beta which is all electrons can penetrate deeper and are stronger than alpha
Gama Rays which are a single high energy wave that are highly dangerous and can go through just about anything.
He spoke about Marie Curie, who won two Nobel prizes, and her husband who discovered Polonium and Radium and was constantly working with uranium ore and died of a plastic anemia.
This shows the dangers of being around radioactive elements, when you ingest radioactive elements it can go right to your bones and cause leukemia. There where no federal administration in power to check that what was being consumed was safe. Many manufactures made things with radioactive elements either not knowing or not caring about the effects.
A Geiger counter is a tool to measure radiation in an object tom used this to shoe us numerable examples of how radiation was poisoning a lot of things around the 1950’s
ex. fiesta ware that made plates, vases and other household items used a color called radioactive orange. they used a uranium glaze for color and if ingested could cause serious health problems.
ex. uranium glass are Florissant under UV light and gives a beautiful color so was used in many other house hold items.
In the 1940’s pockets watches came out with radium in it so it would glow. The woman and young girls making these watches had to paint the radium on and found it was easier to run the brush in between their lips to paint quicker and easier. This cased the women’s teeth o fall out and tumors to occur and eventually they all died from radiation poisoning.
Tom spoke also about a few of the nuclear disasters and bombs in the past. like the gun bomb a simple pile of U-235 that when fired down the barrel of a gun explodes.
the Plutonium bomb which can be called 10,000 bombs because after it was dropped nuclear proliferation happened and many died from radiation poisoning and genetic mutations occurred as well.
tom had so many interesting insight and knowledge about nuclear reactors, bombs and radiation I certainly learned all this and much more durring his presentation.