Of all the discoveries of ancient man, none made a greater impact on humanity than fire.  Although fire was certainly developed independently by many groups, its discovery is none the less one of the greatest moments in mankind becoming what we are today.  Without fire there could be no cooking, no warmth beyond what nature or body heat can provide, no light after dark.  Fire was man’s first discovery that allowed the utilization of energy on demand.  It would later drive our engines, smelt our metals and even propel rockets to the moon and beyond.

Anyone who has started a campfire without an accelerate knows that it can be surprisingly difficult to get a good strong self-sustaining flame going, even with the aid of matches or a lighter.   For early man, it was much more difficult still.  Simply being able to consistently create a fire and contain it for use demonstrates a high degree of intelligence and the ability to learn.

Now scientists have discovered evidence that it may have happened earlier than we had previously believed.

Via CBS News:

Humans used fire 1 million years ago, says study
(AP) NEW YORK – When did our ancestors first use fire? That’s been a long-running debate, and now a new study concludes the earliest firm evidence comes from about 1 million years ago in a South African cave.

The ash and burnt bone samples found there suggest fires frequently burned in that spot, researchers said Monday.

Over the years, some experts have cited evidence of fire from as long as 1.5 million years ago, and some have argued it was used even earlier, a key step toward evolution of a larger brain. It’s a tricky issue. Even if you find evidence of an ancient blaze, how do you know it wasn’t just a wildfire?

The new research makes “a pretty strong case” for the site in South Africa’s Wonderwerk Cave, said Francesco Berna of Boston University, who presents the work with colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One expert said the new finding should be considered together with a previous discovery nearby, of about the same age. Burnt bones also have been found in the Swartkrans cave, not far from the new site, and the combination makes a stronger case than either one alone, said Anne Skinner of Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., who was not involved in the new study.

Another expert unconnected with the work, Wil Roebroeks of Leiden University in The Netherlands, said by email that while the new research does not provide “rock solid” evidence, it suggests our ancestors probably did use fire there at that time.

One thing I have always wondered about, and of course, we will never know, is how many ancients may have learned of fire only to abandon it out of fear. Certainly not all of early man’s encounters with fire were pleasant. It may first have been experienced in the wildfires started by spontaneous combustion of overheated turf or from a lightning strike. Such an experience would be terrifying, and once man began to experiment with fire, it’s all but certain that some mishaps and burns occurred.

Yet some groups stuck with it. Perhaps it was because it was recognized as useful or maybe because it frightened others. Maybe it was just curiosity. Whatever the case, at some point, someone began to create fires and, despite perhaps suffering a few burns or coughing on smoke and enduring the frustration of seeing the tiny smoldering embers go out, they learned how to tame and use fire.

Might there have been some tribes that had mastered fire and others that did not? If so, it’s almost certain that this advantage would have lead to those with fire succeeding and those who didn’t falling by the wayside. This could have even been a factor in early human evolution.

But what i early mankind looked at fire the way we look at new forms of energy today? Would they have used fire at all?  It’s a sobering thought to consider that if our ancestors had the same attitude we have today, we might still be eating raw meat, huddled in mud huts at the mercy of the cold darkness of night…

If there’s one thing I don’t care for, it’s political correctness:  the forbidding of certain words, concepts or ideas because they might offend or the forcing of topics to be dealt with in a manner that attempts to sugar-coat them to whatever extent necessary to stop people from being upset.  Granted, it’s wrong to use overtly offensive terminology or derogatory practices, but sometimes you have to deal with the fact that reality is not as everyone wishes it was.

It’s always been a problem in education, but recently it’s gotten way way out of hand, and it seems to be happening around the world.

In the UK, schools are now banning children making “best friends.”

Via the Sun:

TEACHERS are banning schoolkids from having best pals — so they don’t get upset by fall-outs.
Instead, the primary pupils are being encouraged to play in large groups.

Educational psychologist Gaynor Sbuttoni said the policy has been used at schools in Kingston, South West London, and Surrey.

She added: “I have noticed that teachers tell children they shouldn’t have a best friend and that everyone should play together.

“They are doing it because they want to save the child the pain of splitting up from their best friend. But it is natural for some children to want a best friend. If they break up, they have to feel the pain because they’re learning to deal with it.”

Russell Hobby, of the National Association of Head Teachers, confirmed some schools were adopting best-friend bans.

First, I’d like to know how you can ban kids from having a “best friend,” although I can see how you could force them to drive their unacceptable relationship underground. I wonder what the punishment is for making a “best friend” or not spending equal time with all. And what if you’ve already established a friendship before entering the school?

This is the height of absurdity on every level. It’s perfectly natural for some kids to gravitate toward a play buddy or have a friend who is closer than the rest. Most people have a small inner circle of close friends who they associate with more than the rest of their peers. Clearly some of these relationships will end, either because kids drift apart or because they have an argument or falling out. That might or might not be unpleasant, depending on the circumstances, but really, that’s just life.

I’m not entirely surprised by the policy, however. It seems to be perfectly in line with where society is going.

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Snakes are a form of life that many people don’t like.   I suppose it’s not that surprising.  They’re not mammals, and therefore not warm and cuddly.  They have a body shape that is much different than humans and seems strange and foreign.   They’re slithery, scaly and cold blooded.  They have a weird, somewhat creepy stare with eyes that don’t blink.  They seem very creepy and cunning because they blend into their environment, hide in grass or are difficult to see as they climb trees.  You might not notice that they are there until you step on one.   They have a menacing hiss and a fork tongue that’s strange and scary looking.  They have big teeth and produce a nasty bite.  Many of them are venomous.

They may be the most hated and feared form of animal life for humans.  This is not entirely universal, of course.  Snaked do appear in a positive context in some mythology and religion, but in western religion, they tend to be seen in a very negative manner.   In the Bible, the first evil entity introduced is Satan taking the form of a snake.  Whether it’s the Biblical connotation of snakes or simply their unsettling appearance, snakes are often used as a metaphor for the sneaky, evil and dishonorable in Western society.

Yet, if you consider snakes more objectively, there’s really not much to dislike about them.   A few species of snakes are venomous, but the vast majority of snakes are not venomous at all and are quite harmless.  Of those which do have potentially lethal venom, most are shy and will try to escape if they encounter humans.  There are a few varieties of snake which might be considered to be legitimately frightening animals, because they are both highly aggressive and venomous.  But this hardly makes the entire suborder worthy of fear or dislike.

Moreover, snakes have quite a few major benefits to humans.  The number one way in which snakes benefit mankind is by virtue of the fact that they primarily eat rodents.   A population of field snakes can do a lot to keep the population of rats and mice down in an area.   Rodents, of course, do harm human settlement quite a lot.  They eat or contaminate food stocks and can be a vector for diseases like bubonic plague.   In places like Northern Europe, rats commonly sought shelter in the poorly enclosed structures built by humans.   They have historically been both a nuance and a major danger to public health.

It’s been said that Saint Patrick drove the snakes from Ireland.  To this day I’ve heard the Irish say how he did a great thing because Ireland is free of snakes.   This is rubbish, of course.  There are no snakes native to Ireland and the climate of Ireland is simply not suitable for snakes to flourish.   If introduced to Ireland, a group of snakes might make it through a few seasons, but ultimately it’s just too cool and wet for snakes to make it.  The climate of modern Ireland is what keeps it snake-free, not a saint who drove them away.

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What if I told you that a material existed with the following properties?

• It is highly radioactive.  Because it is a very high energy alpha emitter, it is very radiotoxic.  It also produces a long decay chain of daughters that emit high energy gamma and beta particles.
• It has a half-life of over one thousand years, making it difficult to dispose of and requiring long term storage considerations.   Despite the relatively long half-life, it is still short enough to make it highly radiotoxic, especially because of the nature of the radiation it emits directly and through its daughters.
• It emits enough gamma radiation that a pure sample of the material can kill tissue on contact, after only exposure of a few minutes.
• The gamma radiation emitted by the material and its daughters is sufficient that if you sat next to a few dozen grams of the material, you could easily end up with acute radiation sickness in a matter of hours.   In less than a day it could kill you.
• A pure sample emits enough radiation to create significant amounts of heat.  The total decay heat is more than 100 watts per gram.
• It is chemically reactive, it forms compounds which readily dissolve in fresh and salt water.  It may be mobile in the environment, but it also may cling to materials, making decontamination of areas difficult.
• It has a high biological uptake in most of its chemical forms.
• It may be persistent in the body and has a tendency to be incorporated into bones, replacing calcium.  In such cases, it will not clear the body and has been associated with leukemia and bone cancer.

Such a substance does, in fact, exist:  radium-226.   Gram per gram it’s more toxic than plutonium-239, the isotope most common in spent fuel.   It’s a highly energetic particle emitter that does not decay to a stable isotope but rather to a long chain of other radioactive substances.   First it decays to radon-222, then to polonium-218, astatine-218, radon-218, lead-214, bismuth-214, polonium-214, thallium-210, lead-210, polonium-210 and finally lead-206, which is stable.   For this reason, a chemically pure sample will actually increase in radioactivity until it reached equilibrium with its daughter products.   Despite the relatively long half-life, it produces a great deal of radiation because for every decay of radium-226, there are decays of all the other daughters all the way down the line.  Some of these emit high energy gamma rays.   Radon poses some additional challenges.  Because it is a gas, it may not remain in place and can result in the area around a radium-226 sample accumulating potentially dangerous concentrations of radon.  The radon gas can also disperse, contaminating the area with further decay products.

Despite these dangers, radium-226 was once far more valuable than gold.  For the first half of the 20th century, radium and its decay products were the most widely used radioisotope source for any purpose that required radioactive materials.   It was used for cancer treatment, in the form of radium needles, external sources and devices that collected radon for use in irradiating tissue.  Radium was commonly used in any circumstance where calibration sources were required, with many earth geiger counters coming with a radium-based test source.   It was used in ion and moisture gauges, cold cathode vacuum tubes and combined with beryllium to produce small neutron sources.  Radium was well known for its use in radiolumonescent paints.  The paint was commonly used for clock and watch faces, allowing them to glow brightly without first having to be exposed to light.   Larger concentrations were used for aircraft instrument dials, illuminated markers and cords.  It was realized that the heat from radium could be used as a means of powering boilers or other thermal engines, but was far too expensive to ever be used in this capacity.   It also was experimented with in early “nuclear battery” designs.

Radium-226 exists in small concentrations in uranium ore.  To recover a single gram of the material, several tons of uranium ore must be processed.   Still, because the material had so many uses and was so valuable, large operations existed all over the world to produce it.   In the 1920’s, a gram of radium could cost as much as $120,000, (about 1.3 million USD in modern terms)  though the price later fell to $75,000 due to more efficient production techniques.  Radium needles could contain up to .1 grams of radium, making them worth more than ten thousand dollars.    Because of this, radium was also used as an investment commodity.  Radium needles and other radium sources were kept in bank vaults in the same way gold, silver and platinum might be kept.

Of course, radium is also pretty dangerous for the reasons mentioned above.  Its chemical properties make it prone to contaminating areas and easily absorbed into the body, where it is distributed into bones and teeth, making it an especially persistent and damaging substance.   It produces a great deal of alpha, beta and gamma radiation, which is not desirable for most situations.  Its half life is inconveniently long for applications where disposal after a period of time is expected and the production of radon can be a danger and complicate its use.  For radiolumonescent items, gamma radiation is not desirable and the energy of the alpha particles emitted by radium has a tendency to degrade the phosphorescent compounds in the paint over time.  Radium was blamed for a number of deaths and illnesses, most notably in the “radium girls,” who worked in clock factories, painting the hands and numbers of clocks with radium paint.  Some were encouraged to lick their brushes to sharpen them, resulting in ingestion of large quantities of radium.

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Recently came across an especially irritating editorial in the Washington Times and decided I really could not let the contentions stand.

Here it is, by Dariusz Leszczynski:

Helsinki/Finland, January 11, 2012-Epidemiological studies are given the most weight in evaluation of human health effects. Therefore, when researchers started their effort to find out whether cell phone radiation causes brain cancer, epidemiology was given the most of attention – and the most funding.

Well… yes, since Epidemology is the study of health events, disease patterns, health statistics and disease rates and their relation to factors like environment, lifestyle and other causes, it would seem to be the field of study that would apply to such a question.

It’s as straight forward as determining that geology is the appropriate field of science to look to when trying to determine the characteristics of a rock.

However, and please let me play “devils advocate”,

Only if I can play with science advocate.

is the epidemiology overrated?

No.

There, are we done?

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When spacecraft are sent to explore the inner solar system, solar cells are usually the choice to provide power.  However, when venturing out past the orbit of mars, the intensity of sunlight available makes it increasingly difficult to obtain sufficient amounts of power.  Past Jupiter, it’s virtually impossible to power a space probe with solar cells as they would need to be enormous to gather enough sunlight.   Even within the inner solar system, where sunlight is reasonably intense, solar cells provide limited energy for probes that explore the surface of planets, such as the mars exploration rovers.   Sunlight is also problematic for places like the earth’s moon, where spacecraft would sit in complete darkness for days.

The solution to this problem has been the radioisotope thermal generator.   An RTG is a simple device, consisting of a strong particle-emitting isotope that produces heat and a thermoelectric generator which converts that heat into electricity.   The heat can also be used to keep vital components of the probe warm.  Unlike nuclear reactors, radioisotope thermal generators are extremely simple, have no minimum critical mass, produce little gamma and almost no neutron emissions, which could blind scientific instruments, and therefore require little or no shielding.  Modern RTG’s can provide hundreds of watts of reliable electrical power for years on end in a small, durable package.

The choice of isotope for space missions has always been, and continues to be plutonium-238. Plutonium-238 is a powerful alpha emitter which produces enormous amounts of heat energy.  Plutonium-238 produces only a small amount of low energy gamma emissions, making it easy to shield.  It’s easily prepared into ceramic oxide pellets that are chemically stable and have good thermal transfer.   With an 88 year half-life, plutonium-238 is short lived enough to be a good energy producer yet long lived enough to allow for missions of many decades.

All radioisotope thermal generators used for deep space missions have used plutonium-238.   RTG’s were also used to power the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Packages left by astronauts on the moon.    The RTG used for the Mars Science Laboratory provides 110 watts of electricity and uses about 4.5 kilograms of plutonium-238.  Larger RTG’s have been built for deep space probes, which provide up to 300 watts of power and use 7.8 kilograms of plutonium-238.  Some spacecraft have used multiple RTG’s, for example, Cassini was equipped with three RTG’s which provided a total of 900 watts of power to the spacecraft.

There are other isotopes that can also be used to provide power for RTG’s, but none are as desirable as Pu-238.   Strontium-90, a high energy beta emitter, which can be extracted from spent fuel, also produced significant amounts of heat, but would require substantially more shielding and produces less power per gram of material.  Isotopes of Curium have been studied as well, but also provide much less power and require greater shielding.  Americium-241 has also been considered, but at least four times as much material would be needed to produce the same amount of power, and greater shielding would also be required. Still, Am-241 is regarded as being the second most well suited fuel for RTG use.

Worldwide production of Am-241 is only a few kilograms per year, with US production capacity standing at only 500 to 750 milligrams annually.   Most of this material is already used to fill demand for smoke detectors and moisture gauges.  In order for the US to have a viable chance of using Am-241 as an RTG fuel, production would have to be ramped up significantly.

At one time, plutonium-238 was relatively cheap and easily available.  The United States had large stocks of the material and used it for numerous space missions.  Yet since the early 1990’s, that has not been the case.  Since then, only Russia has had the capacity to produce plutonium-238 and the price has skyrocketed.   US missions have been entirely dependent on plutonium-238 purchased from Russia at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.  Yet now even this limited supply is threatened, as Russia has begun to signal that it will no longer be able to provide the quantities of Pu-238 that the US (or potentially other nations) would require for continued space exploration.

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Background:

Shooting down an ICBM has always been an extremely challenging problem.  There is very little time to react to the missile and they travel at extreme speed.   The distances involved are enormous and because an interceptor must also travel at extreme speed, it can easily shoot right past the target.  This is made even more difficult by the fact that modern missiles have penetration aids and decoys that are hard to distinguish from the actual warhead.  Some also have the ability to maneuver and change course, making it difficult to plot an interception point.  The earliest systems addressed this in a simplistic, though likely effective way:  They would try to destroy the incoming warhead with a massive nuclear explosion.  For example, the Spartan missile carried a five megaton radiation-enhanced warhead that could destroy incoming missiles at a distance of 50 kilometers.   Another missile, the Sprint, used a much smaller explosive and was intended as a last line of defense for warheads that were entering their terminal phase.

Such systems, however, quickly fell from favor for a number of reasons.   For one, the massive blasts associated with them could have some catastrophic effects on the ionosphere and satellites in the area.  While this may have been considered preferable to absorbing an attack with nuclear missiles, it was still a major concern.   The use of high power nuclear explosives was also considered politically impalpable and the prospect of hundreds of nuclear-armed interceptors alarmed the Soviet Union.   The Soviets responded by designing new warheads that were radiation hardened and could withstand blasts up to as close as a few hundred meters.   They also threatened to build up their arsenal of nuclear missiles to include a large enough number to simply overwhelm any defense system

In the end, the US and Soviets both signed treaties to limit such weapons.   The US system, known as Safeguard, was only operational for a few months before being shutdown.   A similar Soviet system was dramatically scaled back and eventually had its nuclear warheads replaced with conventional explosives.

Today there are some interceptor systems that use missiles to intercept ICBM’s, although their effectiveness is somewhat limited.   One of the most notable is the US Aegis anti ballistic missile system. It’s quite effective against single warhead missiles that lack penetration aids and advanced features, but the effectiveness against a barrage of modern ICBM’s is questionable.

A separate approach developed in the 1980’s and focused on the use of directed energy weapons, especially lasers.   These would have a number of advantages over interceptor missiles.  They would be able to engage the target almost instantly and could track a fast moving and maneuvering target in ways that a physical interceptor never could.  The Strategic Defense Initiative was a program initiated by the Regan administration in the early 1980’s.   It studied a number of methods of intercepting missiles and warheads but focused especially on the use of high power lasers.   President Regan would say that one reason for pushing the program was the realization that even a single nuclear missile, perhaps launched by error, could not be stopped and would inevitably trigger a nuclear war.   Therefore, the ability to shoot down a missile quickly and effectively would be an important capability to help preserve world peace.

Whatever the motivation, the Strategic Defense Initiative had decidedly mixed results.  Huge amounts of money were expended and great strides were made in the development of high power lasers and remote sensing systems.   High speed interceptors were developed which eventually were incorporated into THAAD and the Aegis system.   High powered chemical lasers were developed and demonstrated to be capable of blinding satellites and tracking missiles, but showed limited potential against actual missile threats.   A few tests were conducted that showed the lasers could destroy the bodies of missiles, but this was generally limited to fairly thin-walled liquid fueled missiles, which were largely obsolete by the time.

The YAL-1:

After the close of the program in the early 1990’s, some attempts were made to find applications for the technology.   One was the YAL-1.  The YAL-1 is an attempt to make one of the huge chemical lasers developed for SDI into a viable weapon.   The mission of the YAL-1 is to shoot down ballistic missiles during the boost phase. This is a very short period of time during which the missile is just leaving the launch site on course for its target. It would be the ideal time to shoot down a missile, since it would avoid contamination of friendly areas with any materials on the missile and provide the quickest response to the threat.

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When nuclear fission was first discovered in the laboratory, in 1938, it was seen as a relatively strange reaction, resulting from humans taking a sample of the heaviest known element and shooting artificially-generated neutrons at it until some of the atoms absorbed a neutron and split.   While the experiment provided enormous insight into the nature of atoms and helped provide early confirmation of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, by demonstrating the release of energy from an observable change in atomic mass, it was regarded as something that occurred in the laboratory.

Fission was recognized as a potential energy source after the possibility of a fission chain reaction was realized.  A chain reaction occurs when neutrons produced by nuclear fission strike other fissile nuclei, releasing more energy in a self-sustaining reaction.   In 1942, an experiment at the University of Chicago proved that nuclear fission could indeed produce such a chain reaction.   The first artificial fission reactor was created by piling large amounts of uranium together with ultra-pure graphite blocks.  The graphite slowed neutrons, making them easier to absorb by the uranium nuclei, resulting in the fission chain reaction.  In 1945, the first artificial fission chain reaction to occur without the aid of a moderator when the first nuclear weapon detonated in the Trinity test.  The Trinity device used plutonium as the fissile material, an element produced in nuclear reactors at the Hanford site.   Plutonium is too short-lived to be found in large quantities in nature.  Another bomb, fueled by uranium was the result of years of painstaking isotope separation, which increased the amount of fissile uranium-235 available to far beyond what is found in natural uranium samples.

For many years, it was believed that such fission reactions were always limited to these artificial circumstances.   Nuclear fission, it was thought, was the result of painstaking efforts by mankind to gather up the necessary materials, enrich beyond their natural concentrations and either bring them together rapidly in large quantities or place them in the special conditions inside a reactor, where neutron moderators make it possible to sustain nuclear fission.

In 1940, Russian scientists observed the phenomena of spontaneous fission, where heavy elements like uranium split on their own without the need for a neutron to cause the event.  It was also known that uranium atoms could split as the result of a neutron generated by cosmic rays.   However, such events are uncommon and produce little energy.   They are distinct from the chain reactions that had only been observed in human-created nuclear reactors.

All this changed in 1972, when an unusual discrepancy in the concentration of uranium-235 from a mine in Gabon Africa was detected.  Chemical analysis of a unique uranium deposit  indicated that the formation had sustained a fission chain reaction at one time.   The possibility of a natural nuclear reactor of this type had been suggested as early as 1956, but the Gabon discovery was the first time that such an event was confirmed to have happened.  Further investigation of the site identified at least sixteen regions of the deposit where the concentration of uranium and lighter elements clearly indicated that significant amounts of nuclear fission had occurred.

The reactor at Gabon operated about 1.7 billion years ago, producing chain reactions for at least hundreds of thousands of years.   It was remarkably similar to modern, artificial nuclear reactors.   Fission occurred when water seeped into cracks and pores in the deposits of extremely high grade uranium ore.   The water acted as a moderator, causing the chain reaction.   In modern times, water can only be used as a moderator in reactors where the uranium has been slightly enriched to contain more uranium-235 than found in nature, but because uranium-235 has a half-life of about seven hundred million years, there was a great deal more when the Gabon reactor was critical.

Exactly how long the Gabon reactor was critical or how much energy was released is not known.   Scientists have estimated that it probably generated about 100 kW of power and likely operated intermittently due to the buildup of neutron poisons and variations in the water levels in the rock.   It also generated some amount of plutonium-239 and other heavy isotopes, which would have added to the available fissile fuel.

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I’m trying a new method of addressing the lunacy of chemtrails by showing that dumping chemicals at altitude wouldn’t generally do very much or be a very effective way of exposing populations to the chemicals that some claim are being sprayed.  It’s worth noting that the chemtrail loonies can’t even seem to agree on what is being sprayed, so here are some of the more common chemicals claimed.

If chemtrail conspiracy theorists are to believed, then large jet aircraft, possibly the same aircraft that carry passengers are being used to spray unknown quantities of chemicals of some type at high altitude.  While it’s rather difficult to judge the altitude of an aircraft by sight alone, based on what has been claimed to be chemtrails it’s fairly clear that the aircraft were flying at normal jet altitudes, well above tropospheric weather.   If they were indeed passenger aircraft then the altitude is generally above thirty thousand feet.

Some commonly claimed materials:

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Between 1949 and 1951, the company Ac Gilbert produced and sold the “Atomic Energy Lab,” a kit of nuclear and radiation-related experiments intended for use by children in the same way that chemistry sets are used.   The kit included a sample of uranium-238, a Geiger counter, cloud chamber, spinthariscope and some other items used for educational experiments with radiation.  It also included at least three small radioactive sources.   It was modestly successful, likely due to the rather steep price of the set – $50, which would be equivalent to about $460 today.  (about 325 EUR, 285 GBP, 430 AUD)

The AC Gilbert set was certainly the most elaborate and complete atomic energy set sold, but it was not the only one. The American Basic Science Club produced a similar lab set around 1960, and Chemcraft produced a lab set in the late 1940’s to early 1950’s. In the 1950’s, some Chemcraft chemistry sets also included radioactive materials and experiments that could be done with radiation.

I have always thought that these sets were an incredibly good idea and a really excellent way to acquaint young people with the basics of radioactivity and, importantly, demonstrate that radiation is common and not something to be feared. These lab sets were extremely safe. The amount of radioactive materials present in the experimental sources was microscopic and not at all dangerous. The uranium ore or uranium compounds included are not a radiological hazard and are only a toxicity hazard if they are ground up and snorted or otherwise inhaled, and even then, are less toxic than an equivalent quantity of something like lead.

There’s really no better way to get a kid acquainted with science than to actually do some hands-on activities. They improve understanding and retention and allow them to participate directly in making exciting observations. Anyone lucky enough to have had one of these labs as a child probably grew up with a healthy understanding (and not fear) of radioactivity.

Sadly, the world has changed since the early 1950’s, and today most people seem to run around with rampant radiophobia. If something is “radioactive” (which nearly everything is) then it’s seen as being of the highest danger. Nothing is believed to be more environmentally destructive, more dangerous to health, more disastrous, more hazardous and more terrifying than radiation. The idea that at one time children were allowed to learn with materials that produce radiation significantly above background levels fills some with horror and others laugh at just how stupid everyone must have been fifty years ago.

Here’s some of the things that have been said about the AC Gilbert Atomic Lab:

From the Daily Grind:

World’s Most Dangerous Toys: Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Lab
If you thought choking hazards in toys were bad then spare a thought for American kids in the early 50′s.

Introducing the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory. This toy lab set was produced by Alfred Carlton Gilbert between 1950 and 1951 and sold for $49.50US (which is equivalent to about $380 – $400US dollars today). So if you were lucky enough to have well off parents back in the day you may well have been ‘lucky’ enough to get your hands on this radioactive fun set.

From Liveleak:

Very bad toys: Atomic Energy Lab usa ca. 1960
t’s unclear what effects the Uranium-bearing ores might have had on those few lucky children who received the set, but exposure to the same isotope
U-238 has been linked to Gulf War syndrome, cancer, leukemia, and lymphoma, among other serious ailments. Even more uncertain is the longterm impact of being raised by the kind of nerds who would give their kid an Atomic Energy Lab.

From Cracked

The 8 Most Wildly Irresponsible Vintage Toys
#1. Atomic Energy Lab

As a kid, did you ever swallow or at least put in your mouth a small piece of a toy or play set? Did you grow an extra arm because of it? No? Then you probably didn’t have the Atomic Energy Lab.

You see, there was a different approach to nuclear power in the ’50s and early ’60s — atomic energy was our friend and the way of the future, and it would never do anything to hurt us. However, it’s still hard to believe that anyone would entrust kids with radioactive material (even in small doses).

Yet, the Atomic Energy Lab kit produced by the American Basic Science Club came with real samples of uranium (which is radioactive) and radium (which is a million times more radioactive than uranium). Since the mere presence of radioactive material in a children’s product clearly wasn’t insane enough, some of the experiments detailed in the manual also required kids to handle blocks of dry ice. Dry ice, by the way, has a temperature of minus 109.3 degrees Fahrenheit, and it’s recommended that it only be handled while wearing gloves (none were included).

Okay, they’ve got a point about the dry ice, although it’s reasonably safe to handle with basic precautions. Still, I’m downright offended by the way that people completely ignorant of what radiation is or the dangers can sit there and smugly dismiss the idea of a radiation experiment set as being insane. It’s often ranked the most dangerous toy of all time, but in fact, it’s not dangerous at all for any normal 12 year old to learn from a microscopic amount of a radioisotope or a little bit of uranium ore, which they may well have sitting in their backyard anyway.

I’ll go one further:  Not only do I think this was a great idea and a very positive learning experience, I also think that there has never been a better time for something like a radiation and nuclear energy lab set!  Having a set that had a good variety of experiments would be fairly expensive but not unaffordable.  It would be targeted at ages 12 to adult and could also be something science departments at schools might be interested in.

I’m seriously considering doing it!  I’ll take the flack for selling kids a horrible cancer-causing evil material if I have to, because somebody has got to do it, and if I get enough interest I may very well start putting some kits together.

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