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Re: taking apart smoke detectors

I believe the student mentioned below (at least, it was a similar
case) was the subject of an interesting article in Harper's Magazine
in the last year.

There was an incident where a
high school student collected defective detectors by the dozen and removed and
concentrated the Americium. He did the same thing with lantern mantles and Thorium
and tried to make a reactor. This resulted in quite a radioactive cleanup problem.
I would avoid doing this in high school for this reason.

Dan Burns
Los Gatos High School

Tim Sullivan x5830 wrote:

Marc Reif
Physics
Fayetteville High School
1001 W. Stone St.
Fayetteville, AR 72701
Voicemail at 501-444-3050 Ext. 566
Fax 501-444-3056