There's a short fictional account of a science teacher constructing a gold leaf electroscope using stuff in the school, and plaster dug out of the wall of the classroom to help map radioactivity after a limited-strike nuclear war, in "Warday" by Whitley Strieber & James Kunetka. (at least one of these authors has a bit of a nutty back-story, It's important to remember the book lies solidly in the realms of fiction)<p>I always thought it was somewhat fantastical. I'm rather delighted they could have beaded some polystyrene and stuck it in a cup for much the same effect.<p>Several SF novels mention using scintillation plastic. Is that also simply fantasy, or are there passive scintillation meters which could in fact detect levels of radioactivity? The 1900s models demanded 20 minutes of acclimatisation inside a dark chamber and were notoriously hard to use. Rutherford refused to use a counter while he could show his trained workers (women mainly) were as accurate. Those counters were photomultiplier tubes. I think quite a lot of the tech here was a precursor to TV, and ultimately the CCD in some ways.<p>Filmstrip exposure would tell you about a lethal dose, after the event. Helpful for budding scientists if they have enough lab rats to send out with a chunk of film in a wrapper.
Theodore Gray has one of these in his periodic table. This quote stood out to me:<p>"I've held this thing up to the strongest sources of radiation I have and the balls don't budge... I think it's safe to say that if you do ever see the balls drop, you should run, not walk, to wherever you think there might be less radiation around."<p><a href="https://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Samples/094.4/index.s12.html" rel="nofollow">https://theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/Samples/094.4/index.s...</a>
We had one of these in the house when I was a kid in the 90s. Seriously wild to learn what it was when I was like 12, after some years of not understanding ha. Never really was sure if it would work or not.
Why not buy a normal radiometer? They are so cheap and mass produced.<p>These days digital integrating radiometers are able to not just integrate dose over time, but also adjust for dose rate effects (i.e. same amount radiation absorbed over shorter time is more harmful), and ratio of beta, gamma, and neutrons. And they cost in the range of $200. I still keep my CD V-715 somewhere in the closet, though.
I managed to find two of the missing patents mentioned on that page, because there's a picture of a device with four patent numbers on it.<p><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US3093737A/en?oq=3093737" rel="nofollow">https://patents.google.com/patent/US3093737A/en?oq=3093737</a><p>According to the patent Walter Shriner was based in Springfield, Illinois, which was mentioned as "ground zero" for these devices.<p>Shriners patent references the older 568 patent by Failla, who assigned it to the Atomic Energy Commission.<p><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US2731568A/en?oq=2731568" rel="nofollow">https://patents.google.com/patent/US2731568A/en?oq=2731568</a>
I once built an advertising efficacy detector. It was a voltmeter connected to a solar cell. The more light there was in a shop window, the stronger its advertising effect.<p>Does this detector work equally well?