[Rockhounds] Radioactive boy scout a la Harpers (was p=holes etc)

[J Bryan Kramer]

Well one part of the story is instantly suspect. The story of driving past a
store and having his gm counter go wild. Say he registered 10 mR at 25
meters. That would translate (inverse square law) to 6200 mR at one meter or
6.25 grams of Ra. That amount would be killing people at 5 meters and is an
incredible amount of Ra. Holding a bottle with 6 or (1 gram for that matter)
of radium would produce prompt burns of the skin. That's 6 rem/hour at 1
meter or 60 Rem/hr at 10 cm or 6000 Rem/hr at 1 cm. 450 Rems will kill 50%
of the population, 5000 Rems will instantly incapacitate anyone.

So I have to run up the BS flag on that.

BK

On Feb 2, 2008 9:46 PM, R. Peter Richards <rpr at heidelberg.edu> wrote:

> Thanks, Pete, for the URLs.
>
> For the rest of us... Read the article.  Right!!!  Not!!!  For
> starters, what's the melting point of barium sulfate?!!! He did not
> do that on the stove top when his mom was out of the house!
>
> Golf Manor, Michigan is not identified by Google maps.
>
> It is informative, though not definitive, to do a search on Ken
> Silverstein in Google.
>
> For this particular article, many scientific details are suspect,
> though I lack the expertise to evaluate them quantitatively.  To me
> this smacks of a clever writer looking for a literary score, which he
> got - I suspect an investigation into his training would reveal
> enough science (or enough friends) to be convincing but not enough to
> be authoritative.  I can well believe that EPA may have come in and
> declared a disaster, but that is a different issue entirely!
>
> By the way, I have two ~5 lb glass bottles of mercury on my desk
> which I use as bookends for my CDs.  But that's not why I wrote this
> note.  In fact, I'll probably get rid of them pretty soon.
>
> And I have some swamp land in New Jersey (elevation 14')  that in a
> few hundred years will be prime beach front property - make an offer.
>
> Pete Richards
> --
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-- 
"I know I shall be castigated by a large group of people today, but I
was trained to assume that art related to the elusive quality of beauty and
that the purpose of art was concerned with the elevation of the spirit"
Ansel Adams


J Bryan Kramer
North Florida, USA
photos at:
http://pbase.com/photoburner


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