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Geiger Counters:
A Public Radio Commentary
by Bill Hammack
Listen using RealAudio
Today Geiger counters sell so briskly that manufacturers can't
keep up with demand. They're popular with people worried about
nuclear terrorist attacks. But when Hans Geiger invented it, it
was just a way to make his life easier.
Geiger worked in 1907 with the most prominent scientist of the
time: Lord Ernest Rutherford. Geiger and Rutherford wanted to
measure the number of subatomic particles, called alpha
particles, emitted by radioactive substances like radium.
Amazingly they did this by counting the particles by eye. Alpha
particles are too small to see, so Geiger created a special
screen that magnified, in a sense, an alpha particle: It flashed
when a particle hit it. This was an exhausting business that had
to be done in the dark - Geiger recalls his lab as a "gloomy
cellar", where he sat for long periods with his eyes glued to a
microscope. And his concentration was often broken by Lord
Rutherford wandering through the lab singing "Onward Christian
Solders."
Geiger counted particles for five years, then left Rutherford's
lab in England to teach in Germany. It no surprise that there he
perfected an automatic way to count these particles -- the Geiger
counter of today. Instead of using a screen that flashed light,
he passed the alpha particles through a gas that created a
current, which he then amplified into the familiar clicks we
heard today.
Today his counters are in demand partly because of fears that
terrorists will set off what's called a "dirty bomb." That's not
a nuclear bomb, but a conventional explosive loaded with
radioactive contaminants, which are dispersed when the bomb goes
off. The feeling is that if you have a Geiger Counter you can get
enough notice to take an antidote or flee the radiation.
This isn't the first time, though, Geiger Counters have become
popular. You can chart the tenseness of our country's mood by the
sales of Geiger's Counter. They were bought in large quantities
when the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant released radiation
in 1979. And during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 1960s fallout
shelters were stocked with them. And of course, they came into
prominence in World War Two right after the atomic bomb was
dropped. Our response, then, was different: Geiger Counters
became part of a love song. Here is Doris Day, in 1949, singing
the Geiger Counter Song, in which she compares her love to the
tic, tic, tic of a Geiger Counter.
"I tic, tic, tic, why do I tic, tic?
What amazing trick makes me tic, tic, tic?
I tic, tic, tic, an electric tic
When I feel a realistic tic.
You're such an attractive tic,
You give me a radioactive kick;
It's distractive the way you stick,
But love, love makes me tic.
I tic, tic, tic, and my heart beats quick, How can anything go
wrong?
When I'm list'nin' to that Geiger Counter song,
Ya tic, tic all day long."
Copyright 2002 William S. Hammack Enterprises
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