Brown's Gas, astounding.....

[Shaun]

The only thing I can think of that may cause a reduction in emitted radiation is if as BB said the rate of decay to a stable isotope is increased.

This would mean that after "treatment" the sample was more neptunium 237 than it was before the "treatment" thus there is less americanum there to emit radiation.

For the treatment to make this happen the process carried out would need to place the atoms of the sample in exactly the right state to emit their gamma rays. This is the same phenomenon that causes the lines in solar absorption spectra, the atoms of certain elements are in the right state to absorb all photons that are of the right energy (i.e calcium). The same works can reverse. This would however only speed up the emission of gamma radiation and not alpha.

However without further information on americanum we wouldn't know.

[BBKing]

In this case the gammas are emitted as a side effect of nuclear decay, rather than as a result of change in energy levels (they're a result of reduction in mass, according to a certain ubiquitous equation). You can change the rate of some decays (electron capture decay IIRC) by heating up the substance to above the temperature at which electrons remain attached - no electrons to capture, no decay. However, since 241 Am decays by alpha decay (the nucleus spits out two neutrons and two protons) this wouldn't apply. Apparently there is a way to tamper with alpha decay by changing the chemical properties, but the changes are less than the level of precision at which the half-life is measured, so essentially meaningless.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...cay_rates.html

Also, at $1500 a gram, how did he pay for the sample?

Originally Posted by BBKing

Also, at $1500 a gram, how did he pay for the sample?

Coned a lab out of it somewhere? Or perhaps some idiot with the common sense of a two week old dead jellyfish (bit like me at the moment), gave him the money for said radioactive material.......

[AndrewJ]

They prob got it from the local courts auction...they found the stuff while raiding the house of a terrorist network.

And to raise money they sell w/e they was making on Ebay and in auction...

Clever Idea eh

[BBKing]

they found the stuff while raiding the house of a terrorist network.

Ye gods, how fiendish. Attempting to destroy western society with explosive smoke alarms, no doubt.

[Shaun]

Originally Posted by BBKing

In this case the gammas are emitted as a side effect of nuclear decay, rather than as a result of change in energy levels (they're a result of reduction in mass, according to a certain ubiquitous equation). You can change the rate of some decays (electron capture decay IIRC) by heating up the substance to above the temperature at which electrons remain attached - no electrons to capture, no decay. However, since 241 Am decays by alpha decay (the nucleus spits out two neutrons and two protons) this wouldn't apply. Apparently there is a way to tamper with alpha decay by changing the chemical properties, but the changes are less than the level of precision at which the half-life is measured, so essentially meaningless.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physic...cay_rates.html

Also, at $1500 a gram, how did he pay for the sample?

I should have looked at you link more closely

[BBKing]

Going back through the link originally posted by EoB. In between laughing I noticed this:

Later in school our student may learn that everything that can burn contains Hydrogen.

Magnesium metal, sodium...

Later in his studies he may come across the work of Michele Faraday

Evidently related to Michael. Sister, perhaps?

Later on he explains in wonder what appears to be the principle of the early (highly inefficient) steam engines. Laughable.

the primary product of any flame is water

Nope. If one of the combustion products is water, you'll get water. Otherwise you won't.

[Theodoric]

Originally Posted by Earl of Bronze

Just finished reading This book, and in one chapter they disguss the Brown's Gas Machine. To say I was and would be an understatement.

<Snip>
Apparently there have also been experiments into the use of the flame to Detoxify Nuclear Waste. The inventor Yull Brown demonstrated this ability by melting a peice of Americanum 241 (made by the decay of an isotobe of plutonium), along with small peices of steel and aluminium on a brick. After several minutes in the flame, the metals gave off an instant flash, in what Brown said was the reaction that destroys the radiactivity. The Americanum, which had originally measured 16,000 curies of radiation per minute, now showed only about 100 curies per minute, supposedly a similar reading as from ''background radiation''.

<Snip>

I'm sorry, but even without checking out the site it sounds a load of old rubbish. All elements with a higher atomic number than bismuth (83) have no stable isotopes. The only conceivable way that you could destroy the radioactivity of the Americium (atomic number 95) would be to cause it to fission, in which case I'd have expected a large hole in the ground and a mushroom cloud. If it really had destroyed the radioactivity, then he has just discovered something totally new to science and a guaranteed Nobel prize.

Oh, and he might have got his units right. The curie is a measure of the radioactive content of a material, it's related to the number of disintegrations per second. Curies of radiation per minute is meaningless in terms of the radioactive content of a sample; it's simply curies. If you wish to be pedantic, I would accept curies per minute as measuring the rate at which radioactive material is produced in, say, a nuclear reactor.

Well, gotta say I feel rather and kinda for starting this thread. I think I'll go lie down in a dark room for a couple of weeks.

[AndrewJ]

No worries, been a interesting read anyways, never know may have sparked a idea in someones mind.

Amazing things tend to happen when you least expected it, but I am sure a device which helps removing radioactivity would be handy.