In this section, Michael Short talks about how students use their Geiger counters after the workshop experience.
Students have done some fun things with their Geiger counters. A troupe of 20 students went on their own to Salem, Massachusetts looking for radioactivity in the famous graveyards. There’s nothing there! They went to debunk the television show, Ghost Hunters.
"[One] student built an Arduino-controlled data logger for his Geiger counter, took it on a flight, and data logged his radiation as he flew to Hong Kong."
There have also been three groups of students who have gone to old uranium mines in southern Maine and in Moab, Utah and have come back with enormous chunks of really radioactive uranium. It’s sitting on the ground like gravel! They take their Geiger counters hiking, and they sweep around.
Another student built an Arduino-controlled data logger for his Geiger counter, took it on a flight, and data logged his radiation as he flew to Hong Kong.
Students have been taking these Geiger counters all over the world and have been doing some really interesting things with them. I hope to take the Geiger counter kits to Singapore in January to teach the same course at the Singapore University of Technology and Design. I want the students there to realize they can also do radiation work. I just can’t bring the source on the plane!
