Scientists/Discoveries

[Marlin]

The modern smoke detector, responsible for saving so many lives in house fires, can be traced back to 1899 when, at McGill University in Canada, ___________ blew tobacco smoke into his ionization chamber and observed the change in ionization.


Fill in the blank and for a bonus question...what would his annual exposure be from smoking unfiltered cigarettes?

[Marlin]

Match the following "Rays" to discovery method and discoverer.

Beta and Alpha Rays       ___  ___
Gamma Rays                  ___  ___
N Rays                          ___  ___
X Rays                          ___  ___

1...Rene Blonlot
2...Wilhelm Rontgen
3...Paul Villard
4...Ernest Rutherford

A...Discovered when a calcium sulfide thread glowed slightly in the dark while bending radiation 60 degrees through a prism.
B...While using a Rumkoff induction coil to produce a stream of charged particles noticed a shimmering light from fluorescent material laid on a table a few feet away from the apparatus.
C...While measuring the refraction of alpha and beta rays from uranium noticed that in almost every experiment the photographic plate revealed a non-refracted beam.
D...While experimenting with radiation exposure to a photographic plate it was noted that a thin shield produced a diffusion of the photographic image.

[Marlin]

   Any trivia questions I post will be followed up with an answer in about a week (plus or minus a week or two). The question above on "rays" I beleive can be answered 75% with fundamental RadCon theory without any research for most Rad Techs.

   I request that anyone posting a Trivia or History question also provide answers within a reasonable time frame or simply post a Trivia or History fact if you do not intend to follow up.

[Marlin]

Match the following "Rays" to discovery method and discoverer.

Beta and Alpha Rays       ___  ___
Gamma Rays                  ___  ___
N Rays                          ___  ___
X Rays                          ___  ___

1...Rene Blonlot
2...Wilhelm Rontgen
3...Paul Villard
4...Ernest Rutherford

A...Discovered when a calcium sulfide thread glowed slightly in the dark while bending radiation 60 degrees through a prism.
B...While using a Rumkoff induction coil to produce a stream of charged particles noticed a shimmering light from fluorescent material laid on a table a few feet away from the apparatus.
C...While measuring the refraction of alpha and beta rays from uranium noticed that in almost every experiment the photographic plate revealed a non-refracted beam.
D...While experimenting with radiation exposure to a photographic plate it was noted that a thin shield produced a diffusion of the photographic image.

Beta and Alpha Rays..Ernest Rutherford......While experimenting with radiation exposure to a photographic plate it was noted that a thin shield produced a diffusion of the photographic image.


Gamma Rays............Paul Villard.................While measuring the refraction of alpha and beta rays from uranium noticed that in almost every experiment the photographic plate revealed a non-refracted beam.
           

N Rays ...................Rene Blonlot............ Discovered when a calcium sulfide thread glowed slightly in the dark while bending radiation 60 degrees through a prism.


X Rays ...................Wilhelm Rontgen........While using a Rumkoff induction coil to produce a stream of charged particles noticed a shimmering light from fluorescent material laid on a table a few feet away from the apparatus.


   The N Ray was the "cold fusion" of its day. When an English scientist was unable to reproduce the experiment it was declared that the English eye was not able to tell the difference in the glow of the thread. It was not until Blonlot's death that the theory declined from favor.
                             

[Marlin]

The modern smoke detector, responsible for saving so many lives in house fires, can be traced back to 1899 when, at McGill University in Canada, ___________ blew tobacco smoke into his ionization chamber and observed the change in ionization.


Fill in the blank and for a bonus question...what would his annual exposure be from smoking unfiltered cigarettes?

Ernest Rutherford

1 1/2 packs a day produce 1300 mrem/yr.

[RDTroja]

1 1/2 packs a day produce 1300 mrem/yr.

I no longer have the source to back me up, but I found a much higher number than that when doing research years ago (circa 1983). It was closer to 5 Rem/year/pack/day (now there is a division problem for you).

[Marlin]

I no longer have the source to back me up, but I found a much higher number than that when doing research years ago (circa 1983). It was closer to 5 Rem/year/pack/day (now there is a division problem for you).

I remember the same numbers but could not find any current info while surfing that was easily digestable other than the 1300 mrem/yr.

[Marlin]

Thomas Edison developed the Vitascope later known as the Fluoroscope. His assistant developed and died from skin cancer, the US's first radiation related death.

Full article at this link http://www.orcbs.msu.edu/radiation/resources_links/historical_figures/edison.htm

[Marlin]

Happy Birthday E=MC².
****************************************

DURING the summer of 1905, while fulfilling his duties in the patent office in Bern, Switzerland, Albert Einstein was fiddling with a tantalizing outcome of the special theory of relativity he'd published in June. His new insight, at once simple and startling, led him to wonder whether "the Lord might be laughing ... and leading me around by the nose." Joel Holland
An object's mass is its resistance to being accelerated (to having its speed increased). According to E = mc2, an object's mass depends on its energy. This means that the faster an object goes, the harder one must push to increase its speed. (If an object's "rest mass" - called m0 - is the resistance it has to being sped up from a resting position, then Einstein's result can be written more explicitly as E = m0c2/ (1-v2/c2)-½, so m = m0(1-v2/c2)-½, where v2 is the square of the object's speed. As the formula shows, when the object's speed approaches that of light, its mass grows infinitely large, which explains why, regardless of how hard it is pushed, it won't exceed light speed.)
But by September, confident in the result, Einstein wrote a three-page supplement to the June paper, publishing perhaps the most profound afterthought in the history of science. A hundred years ago this month, the final equation of his short article gave the world E = mc².


Full article from NYT's http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/opinion/30greene.html?th&emc=th

[TheEngineer]

I no longer have the source to back me up, but I found a much higher number than that when doing research years ago (circa 1983). It was closer to 5 Rem/year/pack/day (now there is a division problem for you).

As long as year, pack, and day are all not zero, you'll be ok.

[TheEngineer]

Happy Birthday E=MC².
****************************************

DURING the summer of 1905, while fulfilling his duties in the patent office in Bern, Switzerland, Albert Einstein was fiddling with a tantalizing outcome of the special theory of relativity he'd published in June. His new insight, at once simple and startling, led him to wonder whether "the Lord might be laughing ... and leading me around by the nose." Joel Holland
An object's mass is its resistance to being accelerated (to having its speed increased). According to E = mc2, an object's mass depends on its energy. This means that the faster an object goes, the harder one must push to increase its speed. (If an object's "rest mass" - called m0 - is the resistance it has to being sped up from a resting position, then Einstein's result can be written more explicitly as E = m0c2/ (1-v2/c2)-½, so m = m0(1-v2/c2)-½, where v2 is the square of the object's speed. As the formula shows, when the object's speed approaches that of light, its mass grows infinitely large, which explains why, regardless of how hard it is pushed, it won't exceed light speed.)
But by September, confident in the result, Einstein wrote a three-page supplement to the June paper, publishing perhaps the most profound afterthought in the history of science. A hundred years ago this month, the final equation of his short article gave the world E = mc².


Full article from NYT's http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/opinion/30greene.html?th&emc=th

Can you name the (1-v^2/c^2)^-(1/2) term? It has a specific name, and it appears in Einstein's time, length, mass, and energy dilation equations.

[Already Gone]

I no longer have the source to back me up, but I found a much higher number than that when doing research years ago (circa 1983). It was closer to 5 Rem/year/pack/day (now there is a division problem for you).

Roger, I think the 5 Rem/year/pack/day (I know it isn't mathematically correct to express it this way) was the Organ dose to the lungs.  I'm thinking that it could come out to a Whole Body Equivalent of 1300mR/year.  I don't have the tissue weighting factors at hand, though.  Would anyone else like to make the conversion?

[sderyke2002]

Can you name the (1-v^2/c^2)^-(1/2) term? It has a specific name, and it appears in Einstein's time, length, mass, and energy dilation equations.

It is called the Lorentz Factor generally symbolized by the Greek letter gamma