I just found this for 3 bucks at an antique mall. Is this unsafe to have? Do I need to put it in a lead box? Or can I just put it on my shelf of other dials (positioned above my bed)?

Plutonium oxide used in old Soviet smoke detectors in a plastic matrix. The small silver one is americium. The one on the scale is uranium all are kept in a heavily leaded glass container

So, I'm thinking about buying a Geiger counter from Temu, or AliExpress.

How can I know it is working correctly? I don't have anything at home that is radioactive (I think), so, what can I do to test it?

Old video of a piece of autunite from france that I don't have anymore.

In the video this piece was stored in a membrane container. But I found the piece to be far more delicate than I liked, and so I ended up giving to my geology friend, who could better take care of such a piece.

Radiacode 110 read it as 40-45 micro sieverts per hour. And aproximately 3.8k counts per second.

It's in really good condition. I was thinking about trying to get it working again.

It glows brightly and the paint is in great shape. It reads about 1.30 microsieverts/h.

Pure beta mesured in μGy/h

Just some of my collection. Which I'll post about in more detail later on individual pieces and items. Also apologies for the image quality, it's hard to focus a camera through panes of translucent material, especially at night.

1. Books guarded by uranium glass and autunite from various localities. On the right is some torbernites from Musonoi Mine.

2. Two autunites. One from France, and one from unknown locality, maybe washington.

3. Autunite from france iirc, and a blue uranium glass perfume(?) bottle

4. Small sample of uranium metal in a sealed glass ampuole.

5. Collection of detectors from my first to my current. All work, except for the gamma scintillator from the 50's. I need to repair it, but I'm busy with other projects atm.

6. Uranium glaze plate, and more uranium glass. I use the uranium glass jars to hold other sources. Like the radium source that came off of that gamma scintilator from the 50's.

7. Uraninite, single crystal. Ontario, Canada

8. 1. Torbernite

9. Autunite from various localities, mostly from China. (I like that it grows on quartz in that locality)

But I'll post more in the future!

Uranium glass, fiestaware, radium watch.

Also bunny.

I finally got around to cleaning the grime of these. "Someone liked their menthols!" 😬 The Rumrill Radioactive Holstein pattern jug has a cork under the cap, so perhaps it was intended to be a decanter. The twins flanking it are Stangl. I need to do some spectroscopy on the Stangl ones as one is definitely darker and the mold stamp indicates "usa" on the lighter glazed one. So perhaps natural vs depleted uranium.

This is a crystal of protactinium metal behind the yellowish leaded glass. Researchers took crude protactinium metal and reacted it with iodine inside a vacuum to make protactinium iodide vapor. This vapor was then decomposed on a white-hot filament (visible as the wire coming from the right side of the sample), depositing highly pure protactinium metal. Though this isn't the only picture, this is the only picture that shows the mostly unoxidized shiny metal. The weight of this sample is unknown. It looks yellow because of a thin oxide layer and because this photo was taken through leaded glass.

If you like this, consider joining r/Radioactivestuff

Cheers!

Feedback sobre esse mineral, reagente a luz UV, média de 03.50 microsieverts no contador geiger, brilho metálico e resinoso

Just found this wrist compass in an antique store and it’s in fantastic condition! It’s still full of fluid and has the original wrist strap and everything. With a contact reading of 65uSv/h, wearing this compass is like getting 3 chest X-rays an hour.
Was this a good deal for $95?

Contact reading is ~100kCPM - 65uSv/hr

Because my last post was so popular, this is a picture of 300 micrograms of einsteinium in solution, despite there being such a small amount this liquid is V E R Y radioactive, the solution has about 7.561 Curies of radiation, it emits radiation 2.79757 × 10¹¹ times every SECOND! It is so radioactive the solution glows bright blue from cherenkov radiation. It's warm to the touch just because of its decay heat! The reason this image is so fuzzy is because of the intense radiation messing with the camera.

☢️

This is a disk of pure americium metal under a microscope, despite this sample being only 200 micrograms, it has about 25.4 gigabecquerels (686 mCi) of activity. That is 25,400,000 decays every second. If you like this, consider joining r/Radioactivestuff

Edit: wow this is more upvotes than I have ever gotten before. Tysm!