I've been undergoing a battery of tests to find out why my bowels are inflamed, and what inflammatory bowel disease I have. My favorite so far is the gastric follow-through. This is because when I arrived at the hospital, I was shown to a room called "Nuclear Medicine", and fed a breakfast of NUCLEAR EGGS!
Basically, it was scrambled eggs on toast with a cup of ice water. The secret ingredient? Technetium-99m. 99mTc is a radioactive isotope of Technetium, and is used in tens of millions of diagnostic procedures each year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technetium-99m). I even got this spiffy card to show to the TSA should I set off a radiation detector at the airport.
That got me to thinking - I wonder if I would make one of those Geiger counters go "clicky clicky clicky"? Now, if only I had a Geiger counter.
Well, as it turns out, I do (sort of). You see, a Geiger tube is not the only thing that can detect the 140,000 electron-Volt gamma particles that comes spewing out of this stuff. A type of sensor called a complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor can detect these as well. Turns out these CMOS sensors are the sensors located in cellphone cameras. So maybe if I blocked out the visible light with a piece of plastic or something, only the high energy photons of gamma rays would penetrate all the way to the detector. Now, if only I could write a program that could convert that information to a meaningful micro Civert count.
OH WAIT, SOME ONE ALREADY DID!
So, I downloaded the app, had Brandi (who hasn't been irradiated today) calibrate it, and tested it out. Now, I realize that this isn't exactly scientific equipment, but it will at least show relative differences between sources.
The room we were in produced about 12CPM.
Brandi produced 17CPM.
A bunch of seven bananas produced 48CPM. (Bananas are radioactive. Look it up)
And Tony for the win, produced 115CPM! In fact, the numbers on the display all turned red, indicated an unsafe dosage. BUWAHAHAHA!
To be honest, it only produced that high count when the sensor was directly over a specific part my abdomen. The rest of my body produced about a dozen CPM.
Now before you start saying "DUDE, HOW CAN A PHONE MEASURE RADIATION?", remember that Android phones all have a magnetometer, three accelerometers a GPS, one or more cellular transceivers, a Bluetooth transceiver, a WiFi transceiver, and an unspecified number of thermometers, and then go read up on ionizing radiation, gamma ray radiation, nuclear decay, high-z particles, Geiger counters, Technetium-99m, and CMOS CCD sensors, and THEN feel free to say stupid things.
Also, nuclear farts. I've been ripping them all day.
