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Re: taking apart smoke detectors



Mark Sylvester wrote:

Incidentally, the distinction between "radiation", "radioactive
material"
and "radioactivity" is of vital pedagogical importance, and I hope that
Prof
Edmiston is usually more careful about distinguishing between these
terms!

Of course Mark is correct, and I apologize for my sloppiness.

However, having been in the field a long time, I can say with
reasonable certainty that the way I used the words is common usage.

It is certainly true that when I rub a cotton swab across a newly-made
radioactive source I am trying to see if any radioactive material
transfers from the source to the cotton. But I'll bet you that 9 (or
10) out of 10 nuclear scientists will say the same thing I said... that
I was checking to see if any radioactivity rubbed off. Using
radioactivity as a synonym to radioactivity material is extremely
common. Using radiation the same way is less common, and constitutes a
worse blunder, but is also frequently heard among nuclear scientists.

The problem is that as we speak (and even write) we become frugal with
our words. If I am curious as to whether a piece of metal is
radioactive I might say to a colleague, "Is there any radiation on
that?" What I meant to say was "Is there any detectable radiation
being emitted from that piece of metal?" But my colleague instantly
knew what I meant... and that's the purpose of communication. Why
didn't I say, "Is that radioactive?" I could have. But my colleague
was holding a survey meter in his hand and I was asking him to use his
survey meter to look for radiation coming from that piece of metal. In
that context, saying, "Is there any radiation on that?" is pretty
normal language. Substituting "from" for "on" would be a lot better,
but I probably said "on" because I was thinking, "any radiation reading
on that," and I left out the word "reading." There's another
problem... we're thinking one set of words and we say another.

So half of me is embarrassed for using the words so sloppily, and the
other half is saying, "wait a minute... that's the way we nuclear
scientists talk."

Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D. Phone/voice-mail: 419-358-3270
Professor of Chemistry & Physics FAX: 419-358-3323
Chairman, Science Department E-Mail edmiston@bluffton.edu
Bluffton College
280 West College Avenue
Bluffton, OH 45817