coolest invention ever! tin foil hat required

an older friend's dad recently died... he was a lifelong artist and in his time collected many things. i was helping him empty his house (mom moved into retirement home) and came across an item in his art room that i was about to toss but thought i'd keep because it seemed too cool
i give you,
THE STATICMASTER




and heres links for pages of the manual
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y144/sad_sagi/DSCN8006.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y144/sad_sagi/DSCN8007.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y144/sad_sagi/DSCN8008.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y144/sad_sagi/DSCN8009.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y144/sad_sagi/DSCN8010.jpg
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y144/sad_sagi/DSCN8011.jpg


should i get a lead box for this thing? its currently sitting on the other side of a container full of 15 pounds of lead shot...

the wiki page says it has a half life of 138 days... does that mean by now its fairly dead? (printed expiration date in '77)
and theres a few on ebay for 20 bucks and less, and one for 2400$ for no reason

wth is that
hey i can post again freaking comp is messed up

anti static brush... it brushes off dust and ionizes stuff so it repels more dust. i guess people use it for photo stuff

You don't need to keep it in a lead box , it's perfectly fine just sitting on your desk. Polonium is only an Alpha emitter IIRC .


EDIT: It's even less dangerous being that old , with a half life that short !

the wiki article said something about being 250k times as poisonous as arsenic or something was kinda scary but i guess its contained well, and it said you'd need a thousand of these to gather enough to make it harmful
searching the net it i cant tell if they are still made, the most recent one i could find expired in '00 and it looks like you replace it yearly if you use it seriously for photo applications.

maybe if they used these on movie reels we'd stop seeing crap on it?

It's VERY toxic if you ingest it, but otherwise it's fine.


I think it's actually one of the components used in Nuclear bombs !

Nuclear bombs use enriched uranium, and about a ton of TNT to prep it for reaction.

Nuclear material are often used.

Colbat and Iridium are used for decontamination and sterilisation.

Iridium, technicium and radium are used to scan people.

Europium, trinitium and other rare isotopes can be used for GITD materials.

Depleted uranium lets you scan throught metal.

Polonium helps remove dust.

Americium is used in smoke detectors.

Enriched Uranium is used in electricity pruduction and bombs.

Plutonium is stored away and gives people the creeps.
But it may be soons used to create electricity thanks to new nuclear science.


As you can see, there's many usage for nuclear material. But don't worry, most of them create alpha rays, wich are easly blocked by the layer of dead cells of you top layer of skin. On some forms, they can be sold and handled without any permit or precaution. I know that www.unitednuclear.com sells some.

Nuclear bombs can use uranium or plutonium. Of the 2 bombs dropped on Japan at the end of WWII, one was a plutonium-based bomb and one was a uranium-based bomb. Both have been used in nuclear weapons.

Plutonium is also used in deep space probes that are too far from the sun for solar panels. The plutonium generates heat as it decays, and thermoelectric generators collect the heat and convert it to electricity

That suff is so far gone I doubt it's even measurably radioactive, still a neat find though

I used one of those dust mops years ago. The poor thing is dead (RIP) Polonium is not plutonium............
A real antique. They used to sell replacement cells for those brushes. Use your geiger counter (if it will sense alpha) to see if it is allive yet.

Mike

I doubt he has a geiger counter sitting anywhere near...



:undecided:

not the least bit. i could hold it up against my monitor a while and see if i get a spot thats dust free in a few days to test it

Cool antique, let us know how it went after the little experiment

It's completely dead.

If the half life is 138 days, and it's been 32 years, it has less than 0.00000000000000000000001% of its original polonium content. They are only 20% pure to begin with anyway.

-Mark

EDIT: I get lazy