These aircraft Turn Bank Indicators are radioactive and still glow in the dark even though some of them are from the 1940's. uraniumstore.com #radiation #radioactive #radium
I used to live near the National Physical Laboratory in the UK. They used to paint radium dials for aircraft instruments. Years later, part of the site was re-developed for housing. Fortunately the history of the site was known, and preliminary work recovered instruments, paint brushes and other radioactive debris. After removal of several feet of earth, an impermeable membrane was laid, and the area covered in soil.
Go Drew, first caught your radioactive tile video. watched 5 since and have seen your sub level go from 6.1k to 7k in those few days. Cheers for such great level headed content towards radiation without the hyperbole drama. Love it.
Most of my background is in cinematography...mainly timelapse related. I've been doing that for 16 years. I'll post some of my older work here eventually. 599productions.com is my timelapse and drone website if you want to check it out.
When I was young, I was fascinated with flow in the dark paint that could be charged up with any light source. But these glow in the dark indicators that almost never go dim, are amazing, and terrifying at the same time. Radiation I both love and fear it!
Very nice video as always, I have a collection of similar aircraft dials, which are all RA, I am very careful where i store them and they emit a large amount of Radio active, there dials are rare find in my country as i live in a very very small island (Malta) and i happen to bought them from a collector who is not interested in radioactive. (lucky me).
I have a Luminox watch from the 90's, and it has tritium markers in it, that when it was new, they were crazy bright! They are now quite dim, but in their day, they were very bright. Cool stuff!
@@FromGregg what were the conditions you took this measurement under? Was it incl beta radiation or jus gamma? What detector did you use? Was the paint on the instrument exposed, or was it behind the glass?
Amazing video! Stunnning timelapse at the end. I have two Radium dial westclox clocks from the 1940s and they both have Radium paint. The Zinc sulfide is completely dead from the gamma emission but it still sends my detectors into the 80 K region and on the one time I removed the front glass in an controlled environment the meter topped out at 92k. Interesting history. I really enjoy your channel. Great cinematography and fantastic work.
The vacuum supply was to run the gyros in the turn indicator and artificial horizon. Airspeed indicators also needed the air from the pitot and static ports, so tubes were essential for these instruments.= to operate, not to make them more accurate.
Have you ever walked around old Victorian houses that used to use gas light? I bet you would find radioactive areas on mantels and were the wall meets the floor in some spots. The mantles because that is where the clocks sat and might have lost paint and the floors under where they had the gas light. Gas light mantles were made of Thorium.
Pilots, over the years, have spent tens of thousands of hours in front of these flight instruments. A lot of older aircraft still have these instruments.
That is to say if you were to hold the same number of atoms of tritium, and radium, the tritium would probably be the one you would run from first. Amazing quality of videos!
Oh yeah, same amount of tritium would be very radioactive...but radium gives off way more gamma rays and alpha radiation. Tritium is mainly a beta emitter.
Not too sure about that statement actually. Though the tritium might have 130 times the activity of radium mole for mole, the 5.7keV (average) betas don't go through anything (significantly less penetrating than alpha even, and with 0.1% of the energy of a typical alpha, usually ~5MeV). Tritium produces no gamma during its decay. That same radium sample would produce large amounts of alpha, hard betas, and gammas, along with radon. Also if at equilibrium with its decay chain (as it usually is) a radium source will actually be 9x as active as the radium alone. I would happily handle several Curies of tritium (typical keychain contains 300mCi), whereas a device containing just a 10uCi of radium scares me. So I have to disagree with that statement, but your point still holds that tritium has a WAY higher specific activity than radium.
I have a collection of those old instruments, in Argentina the newest are so expensive and hard to find so we repair and use the old radioactive ones. Loved your video, I’ve found you two days ago and all the videos I watched are a truly work of art. Thank you
I like the Radium-painted dials on gauges and clocks, etc. because usually they've got WAY more radium than they really need to, so instead of having to do crazy dangerous stuff like scraping off the paint and mixing it with the new paint, you can instead just throw some new zinc-sulfide lume paint over the old stuff and it'll still glow nicely from the alpha particles if you thin it a little. Strontium aluminate non-radioluminescent glow paint works good for some things but even the REALLY good stuff just doesn't stay glowing for long enough, if you want your watch to be readable by the time you wake up tomorrow or your gun sights to be glowing when you take it outta your holster you need either radium paint, tritium tubes, or some kind of battery-powered electroluminescent system. If leakage is a concern, cover up the paint with a clear coat so it doesn't flake off and get powdery. For me that's less of an issue, I work in HAZMAT on the daily so if I'm gonna open up a clock or something I just bring my respirator home and wear gloves, radium compounds are fairly water soluble so it'll come out in the wash and at the end of the day a few flakes of radium paint is less radioactive pollution than the amount of coal that gets burned to keep my lights on, or the process brine from the oil wells that fuel my car up. If it isn't in my body, it's a drop in the ocean.
I really like your videos. If you're having trouble with S-log3 (extreme noise in night shots, autofocus inconsistencies), I recommend HLG3. It's damn near all of the dynamic range of S-log3 but without any of the weirdness S-log3 has.
I think it would be cool if you do like a timelapse project, taking pictures of the tritium like every week or month or something, for as long as possible (10+ years), maybe? so it gets dim and dim every year.
There is a movie out called 'The Radium Girls', and what it did to these women was devastating, because they would lick the brush and apply the radium paint, causing cancer in their jaws ,mouth, and even death occurred.
There's a beach northwest across the Forth from Edinburgh (Dalgety Bay) that was used to dispose of WW2 aircraft. It's currently in the process of being screened and cleaned of all the radioactive particles that were left behind from those old gauges.
with the 2 planes that crashed at the dallas airshow, b17 and king cobra, do you think rescuers/salvage to crash sites of older planes should be concerned about radiation/contamination from the broken gauges?
I remember seeing a documentary on British television about the 'Radium Dial' girls. I saw it when I was about 11 years old, and the horror of what happened to them has stayed with me for over 40 years. The way they were treated by the company who denied responsibility, their state government and federal government as they sought compensation, made me tend distrust authority ever since.
I used to fix clocks when I was a kid, think I encountered a few radioactive ones but that was before I knew about it! Had a drawer of clock hands which might have been a bit spicy! At least it was in a drafty shed where radon couldn’t build up. I do remember picking the paint out of some hands once 😮. It was all thrown away decades ago.
Would be interesting to perform a wipe test on each gauge and see what reading you get, presumably you would just pick up radon decay progeny, but could also pick up and particulates of Radium. I have some Radium painted objects and store them in Air tight containers although it’s probably not necessary. Thanks for the great content.
I've done a test with my AirThings radon meter to see how high I could get it in my cabinet where I keep some radium compasses and that got decently high for not being an airtight container.
@Brit That's a great idea, to distinguish in between radium and radon decay products, you will have to repeat the measurement within several hours, if the levels drop significantly, there is probably no radium contamination on the outside parts of the gauge. However, you could still get some reading caused by Pb-210, with half-life about 20 years. Make sure that you use proper detector, sensitive to radiation given off by the radionuclides in radium decay series.
@RadioactiveDrew >>> Is there some way you could -- *AFFORDABLY & SAFELY* -- build some kind of 'sealed glove box' to disassemble those instruments and then apply new zinc paint to the radium bits to allow the glow to be visible to the naked eye? *EDIT→* I posted this comment early on in a _re-watch_ of this video. What you said about the paint escaping those instruments if they are poorly sealed pretty much answers my question.
You can safely take these apart without contaminating your work area. But applying a fresh coat of zinc sulfide won’t work as good as what was originally applied. From what I’ve seen the radium and the zinc sulfide needs to be mixed together and applied in that mixture. I know they use to take old damaged dials and put the parts that had the radium paint on then in a solvent of some kind. This would dissolve the paint and make it to where they could recover the radium and mix up a fresh batch to make new dials.
The let most clock has a flight time subdial and the one at the bottom is a stopwatch subdial. Here a link that talks about the clock. grail-watch.com/2018/04/02/russian-mig-clock-for-your-desk/
The radioactive paint is easily removed, to restore the instrument. In a vacuum gyro, the gas will enter by the filtered intake and exit to a plane's venturi. Turn and banks, such as the Pioneer Gen A Motor/ Bendix, are favorite navigation devices. Give them to airport kids and watch how fast they wind up back in the sky.
The ball (inclinometer) doesn't tell you whether the airplane is level. It tells you whether your turn is coordinated. It's the thing above the ball, the turn coordinator, that tells you if the aircraft is level. Don't get that wrong - it will lead to a graveyard spiral!
Well the closer you are the more intense the radiation is. Personally I keep my radium doped dials in a safe in the garage. But if I had the room I would have them in a display case in an office that’s away from everyone else. All my display areas are either too close to me or family.
These instruments generally aren't detectable more than a couple meters away, so at this distance you're relatively safe from external exposure. The issue with these is the radon gas they produce, which will contaminate everything in proximity to the instruments with radon decay progeny. Best to keep them outdoors or in a VERY well ventilated area (basically not in your home)
You mentioned that you were going to put these dials in your safe with your other highly radioactive items. Can you do a video on the items in your safe?
@RadioactiveDrew I’ve never seen a Blue Radium Turn Bank indicators before. Could you link me the specs or model number / Stock number or NSN? I would love to snag one for my collection. I have orange and Green Ra-226 but I would love to snag a blue one. The blinker oxygen flow indicators are yellow radium. And several Radiacmeters were painted with Green Ra226 some even with Pm-147. I love your content and I’ve been a long time viewer. You’re one of the ones who got me into Spicy collecting.
Pretty sure the blue ones were those larger back gauges in the video. I'll see if I can get into my radioactive collection and look up a serial number...it might be in the video to be honest.
@@RadioactiveDrew thank you that would be so helpful and I would be very appreciative. One of the turn and bank indicators was listed with the service tag and I have that one but the blue ones are elusive and I believe it all comes down to serial number / manufacturer. No rush just whenever you have time. Thanks Buddy.
Hey Drew. Some time ago i came across 3 old instruments of an Vampire de Havilland at a flea market. I wasnt aware of the danger of them and they were really old and dusty. After that, i was at a burger Restaurant and i cant remember if i washed my hands before eating. Is there something you can do afterwards or is it just living with it and hoping nothing was ingested?
More than likely you are fine and will be. If the instruments were bare faced, meaning no glass, that wouldn’t be great. But it also wouldn’t be that much of a problem. With radium ingestion I know the body thinks it’s calcium and incorporates it into bones. But I’m not sure how much of it goes through that process and how much passes through the body. So I wouldn’t worry about it. Plenty of other sources of radium in our daily lives…like in ground water that is naturally occurring.
@@RadioactiveDrew alright, Thank you. That takes some Pressure. Already tried to meassure the radioactivness with a radiacode, but didnt get a meassurement through the cardboard Box. Was little bit to scared of taking them out. Do you know if it is possible to get some result with it?
Sorry. My numbers for airline flight were off by a factor of 10. An interesting place to check out would be the US Capitol building in Washington DC. It was built with some interesting sandstone walls.
@@RadioactiveDrew You could calculate the absorbed dose of a WW2 pilot by measuring the current level of radiation, calculating the area of the paint, looking at a photo of a cockpit and estimating the total area of all the radium paint in the cockpit. Would be a cool episode.
Nonsense. They are sitting away back from them. They have less radiation than an old radium dial watch. But you can pick up 10mR or 100uS from one long haul airplane ride in a modern jet at 35 to 40 thousand feet from natural radiation.
@@vinquinn A) I don't believe you. While the inverse square law will obviously still apply, the sheer number of these things is going to produce a nontrivial dose. and B) 10mR from a single flight is absolutely ridiculous, the real value is like 1-2mREM and the annual average pilot dose is in the range of 227mREM.
Beautiful time-lapse at the end. Those dials look truly amazing. Is this how the paint would've glowed at night back in the day when it was fresh? I read all about the radium girls (the women who painted these dials) and this paint would get stuck to their hair, clothes and skin and it would cause them to glow in the dark at night. Truly awful thinking about it and knowing what happened to most of them after, but I always wanted to know how the glow might've looked like.
I would like to believe that when the paint was new and for at least the first 10 or so years it would glow that bright. Kind of hard to say because I've never seen a fresh batch of radium paint.
@@RadioactiveDrew They glowed so brightly that you could tell they were luminous in poor light, not just complete darkness. Using military spec dial painting on a multi-engine aircraft like a B-29 Superfortress, you could see around the entire cockpit from the instrument panel glow.
It looks like during the timelapse that the radiation was hitting the camera sensor just like in your other video with the thorium coated lens! Unless that was just noise.
I watched the documentary of the radium girls.... what a SAD way to go and the "torture" the girls went through just to satisfy their bosses. Nice time lapse!
Radium can be very radioactive. Alarm clocks are usually on the lower end of activity because they didn't use nearly as much radium as what you would find in aircraft dials.
1940's and still glowing is amazing. 95,000 counts per minute. I recently purchased some new open gun sights that use Tritium to allow use at night. The manufacturer says, the production of tritium from lithium-6 is done using breeder ceramics. They say, Tritium will glow on average 20 years. Those Turn Bank Indicators put my gun sights to shame.
If you had gun sights made with radium instead of tritium they would be way more radioactive. As in I would be concerned carrying it around close to your body for long periods of time. The tritium gun sights don't really emit any radiation.
I wiped my dirty radium compass that was left outside for months, and when I wiped it, the napkin got contaminated and it read at 20kcpm. Was it the radium dust or radon daughters?
Good afternoon I’m a 64 year old man when I was a kid in the 70s Mattel made a glow in the dark paint call bug juice any idea how radioactive this is or ever heard of it thanks. Thanks I enjoy your shows
Are you talking about that Kenner's lightning bug glo juice paint? If you are that's just standard Phosphorescent paint that needed to be exposed to light to charge so that it'll glow in the dark. No radioactivity in that.
Are tritium glow-in-the-dark markers as bad as radium ones? Especially when you're talking about stuff like concealed carry guns where they're pressed right up against your body.
Not even close. Tritium gives off some beta radiation but most of that I blocked by the glass containing the tritium…it can give off some low energy X-rays from the beta radiation hitting the glass. Radium gives off a lot of hard gamma radiation which is difficult to shield against.
40 years ago we went to a fancy dress party, I used that paint but with it being brittle I used clear tape over the top. Then radiation wasn't a consideration even though our uni had a trip to a nuclear power station and thermal efficiency and entropy and enthalpy was ever every day words. What is omitted from that paint, is it mainly alpha particles? Reflecting back I am surprised that it was available.
Some can be painted with radium paint that glows in the dark. But the emitted radiation is mainly going to be in the form of beta and gamma radiation. Radium gives off a lot of alpha radiation but that radiation is mainly blocked by the glass of the compass.
@@RadioactiveDrew I seen some compases have radium paint even outside glass. In airplane era maybe people figured out that painting outside glass is dangerous?
@RynaxAlien I’ve seen those compasses as well, with radium paint on the outside. But some of the ones I’ve seen had their cover glass removed, I’m sure because it was damaged. Most of the time the radium paint was behind a barrier of some kind so that it wouldn’t rub off.
Unless your house is inside a uranium mine I'm sure the radon level would be fine. The level of 4 pCi/L set by the EPA isn't based on any science. Its a number that is extrapolated backwards from high doses of radon found in uranium mines that were found to give miners lung cancer.
I've collected a few radium dials recently, and now I'm wondering about radon. Do you do anything to mitigate the radon, or is it not that big a deal? Everything I'm reading online says we're all gonna die from radon.
The dangers of radon have been oversold to the public. Even with that said I usually don’t keep my radium dials in the house. The level of gamma radiation is a bit much for my taste. If I had an area to display them with more distance from people I would. But for now they stay in the safe.
Just took a reading from it using a gamma filter on the Radeye B20, got 145 uSv/hr. The radium source in the level section can be removed and it would easily max out my detector. Might do a video on that in the future.
Would your mailbox become at all radioactive itself, after that exposure? I am thinking, no. But I am unsure about at what point such exposures become assumed by the secondary material.
You could find there some contamination by radon decay products. You could find Po-218, Pb-214, Bi-214 and Po-214. These would decay rapidly, the overall half-life being around 30 min. To accumulate enough Pb-210 and its decay products you would have to wait for a few years at least. You can find more about the principles involved by searching for "radioactive equilibrium".
The beta decay from tritium is what makes it glow, well that and the phosphor inside the tube. So putting radium next to the tube wouldn’t do anything. Beta radiation has a very hard time penetrating glass. It also wouldn’t recharge the tube as that isn’t the mechanism in which tritium is made.
@@RadioactiveDrewine leaked like a sieve. But on the point about why one turn bank indicator is hotter then the other. So back in the 1930-50 they would service these gauges. When the glow would dim they would re-apply more of the “un-dark”. Which made them appreciably more radioactive. My father has a traveler from these gauges that says that it needed to be replaced due to the gauge being to dim. They said they re-apply the “Un-Dark” and put it back in stock rotation. Apparently they did this up to the 50’s. Love the content brother. Great video. Those time-lapse photos where Epic! Can’t wait to binge watch the rest.
@@thesciencefurry it's charged both by heat and by ultraviolet. No radioisotopes required. Zinc sulfide also doesn't fundamentally require radioisotopes.
Look up Radioactive Boy Scout, or nuclear boy scout. David Charles Hahn built a nuclear reactor in his mother's back yard using all kinds of different sources, one of them being from old clocks. He ended up making the neighborhood radioactive. Unless that was the joke
@@manletopia4801 well it is special because its radioactive. These indicators will glow with never seeing light only because of the radiation coming off of the radium.
Didn’t decide to talk about all the pilots who sat behind walls of these gauges in the cockpit or planes OR how nearly every watch contained radium for many years. Sadly, you’re just another fear monger. You didn’t even explain the difference in available lume from radium paint vs other types of glow in the dark paint.
He does the opposite of fear mongering, he states that they are radioctive and explains the different types of radiation to people who don't understand the differences and realize the different types of risks. Just because somo e talks about the riaks doesn't make it fear mongering, he provides information that the average person doesn't have which lowers the overall fear of radiation, it's not all this deadly stuff that's immediately going to kill you hell a decent amount o it can't even penetrate skin which is talked about countless times in his videos. Just because your mad he didn't talk about a few select things doesn't change how good the information he does present is
He's anything but a fearmonger, how can you call him this if you was to watch anything from him, he's exactly the opposite of a fearmonger. How do you come to such assumptions.
@@noodlelynoodle. I don't get people like this, unless they're selectively choosing what they want to hear and make assumptions, or something else. It baffles me.
Quick question. How exactly do you store these? I bought a ww2 vacuum sealed can with a roller smith ammeter type g-1 a few years back and have it on the top of a shelf in my man cave (I like to collect ww2 stuff, especially stuff that’s NOS or never been opened) I never opened the vacuum sealed can or anything like that. I tried researching online if these were gauges that had the paint on them or not (did all aircraft gauges have this paint on them or only important ones) Just trying to determine how much I really want to keep something like this around. Especially given I have pets I don’t want exposed to stuff like this. Thanks so much in advance! I appreciate ya! Edit: I guess I should test them first right? Do you have a recommendation of a decent tester that would give me an idea of their potential hotness? Thanks again!
A lot of different gauges were doped with radium. If the gauges are in good condition they shouldn't present any type of risk...as long as you aren't really close to them all the time. Sounds like they are on a top shelf and kind of out of the way. The best way to tell if they are radioactive is to use a Geiger counter of some kind. The cheapest one that I can recommend that will easily pick up the type of radiation coming off of something like this would be the Better Geiger. You can buy it from their site or on Amazon. I did a review of this detector with some other ones czcams.com/video/3ONbwFMBS4Q/video.html Also, the gauges can produce radon gas but it isn't that big of a problem.
You must be a TikTok user to say a 13 minute video is too long. Must be nice have the attention span of a gnat. A 13 minute video is nowhere near a long video, especially if it contains good information. Ugh people like you make me mad.
I used to live near the National Physical Laboratory in the UK. They used to paint radium dials for aircraft instruments. Years later, part of the site was re-developed for housing. Fortunately the history of the site was known, and preliminary work recovered instruments, paint brushes and other radioactive debris. After removal of several feet of earth, an impermeable membrane was laid, and the area covered in soil.
Yeah, back in those days people weren't very concerned about contamination areas with radioactive materials. At least they cleaned it up.
That’s me with my meter when headed to the mailbox, I often wonder if my neighbors are on to me 🤪
I sometimes think the same thing.
Most people probably don't recognize a typical modern Geiger counter. But try the same thing with a bright yellow '60's era CD V-700 Victoreen :-)
Go Drew, first caught your radioactive tile video. watched 5 since and have seen your sub level go from 6.1k to 7k in those few days. Cheers for such great level headed content towards radiation without the hyperbole drama. Love it.
Thanks. I figured its the best way to approach this subject. Head on...no BS.
That timelapse! Wow! This made my day as a photographer!
Most of my background is in cinematography...mainly timelapse related. I've been doing that for 16 years. I'll post some of my older work here eventually. 599productions.com is my timelapse and drone website if you want to check it out.
@@RadioactiveDrew>>> Cool...👍
When I was young, I was fascinated with flow in the dark paint that could be charged up with any light source.
But these glow in the dark indicators that almost never go dim, are amazing, and terrifying at the same time. Radiation I both love and fear it!
Very nice video as always, I have a collection of similar aircraft dials, which are all RA, I am very careful where i store them and they emit a large amount of Radio active, there dials are rare find in my country as i live in a very very small island (Malta) and i happen to bought them from a collector who is not interested in radioactive. (lucky me).
I have a Luminox watch from the 90's, and it has tritium markers in it, that when it was new, they were crazy bright! They are now quite dim, but in their day, they were very bright. Cool stuff!
I just got some gun sights with Tritium. Quite bright. Maker says, 20 years. I'll see or not see.
That first meter is HOT! Great video!
Thanks. Yeah that first one was pretty spicy.
I found one from a WW2 aircraft that’s ~400 μSv/h. Have you measured the hot one in μSv/h yet? Great videos! Keep them coming!
@@FromGregg what were the conditions you took this measurement under? Was it incl beta radiation or jus gamma? What detector did you use? Was the paint on the instrument exposed, or was it behind the glass?
Amazing video! Stunnning timelapse at the end. I have two Radium dial westclox clocks from the 1940s and they both have Radium paint. The Zinc sulfide is completely dead from the gamma emission but it still sends my detectors into the 80 K region and on the one time I removed the front glass in an controlled environment the meter topped out at 92k. Interesting history. I really enjoy your channel. Great cinematography and fantastic work.
The ones with tubes at the back were connected to vacuum sources/pumps in the aircraft to draw out all the air and make them more accurate.
The vacuum supply was to run the gyros in the turn indicator and artificial horizon. Airspeed indicators also needed the air from the pitot and static ports, so tubes were essential for these instruments.= to operate, not to make them more accurate.
Have you ever walked around old Victorian houses that used to use gas light? I bet you would find radioactive areas on mantels and were the wall meets the floor in some spots. The mantles because that is where the clocks sat and might have lost paint and the floors under where they had the gas light. Gas light mantles were made of Thorium.
Pilots, over the years, have spent tens of thousands of hours in front of these flight instruments. A lot of older aircraft still have these instruments.
That is to say if you were to hold the same number of atoms of tritium, and radium, the tritium would probably be the one you would run from first. Amazing quality of videos!
Oh yeah, same amount of tritium would be very radioactive...but radium gives off way more gamma rays and alpha radiation. Tritium is mainly a beta emitter.
Not too sure about that statement actually. Though the tritium might have 130 times the activity of radium mole for mole, the 5.7keV (average) betas don't go through anything (significantly less penetrating than alpha even, and with 0.1% of the energy of a typical alpha, usually ~5MeV). Tritium produces no gamma during its decay. That same radium sample would produce large amounts of alpha, hard betas, and gammas, along with radon. Also if at equilibrium with its decay chain (as it usually is) a radium source will actually be 9x as active as the radium alone. I would happily handle several Curies of tritium (typical keychain contains 300mCi), whereas a device containing just a 10uCi of radium scares me. So I have to disagree with that statement, but your point still holds that tritium has a WAY higher specific activity than radium.
I have a collection of those old instruments, in Argentina the newest are so expensive and hard to find so we repair and use the old radioactive ones. Loved your video, I’ve found you two days ago and all the videos I watched are a truly work of art. Thank you
Glad you are enjoying the videos. Be careful taking those instruments apart.
There were also aircraft circuit breakers and toggle switches with radium bead tips from the same era
I like the Radium-painted dials on gauges and clocks, etc. because usually they've got WAY more radium than they really need to, so instead of having to do crazy dangerous stuff like scraping off the paint and mixing it with the new paint, you can instead just throw some new zinc-sulfide lume paint over the old stuff and it'll still glow nicely from the alpha particles if you thin it a little. Strontium aluminate non-radioluminescent glow paint works good for some things but even the REALLY good stuff just doesn't stay glowing for long enough, if you want your watch to be readable by the time you wake up tomorrow or your gun sights to be glowing when you take it outta your holster you need either radium paint, tritium tubes, or some kind of battery-powered electroluminescent system. If leakage is a concern, cover up the paint with a clear coat so it doesn't flake off and get powdery. For me that's less of an issue, I work in HAZMAT on the daily so if I'm gonna open up a clock or something I just bring my respirator home and wear gloves, radium compounds are fairly water soluble so it'll come out in the wash and at the end of the day a few flakes of radium paint is less radioactive pollution than the amount of coal that gets burned to keep my lights on, or the process brine from the oil wells that fuel my car up. If it isn't in my body, it's a drop in the ocean.
I really like your videos. If you're having trouble with S-log3 (extreme noise in night shots, autofocus inconsistencies), I recommend HLG3. It's damn near all of the dynamic range of S-log3 but without any of the weirdness S-log3 has.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll have to try out HLG3 next time I'm out shooting at night.
I think it would be cool if you do like a timelapse project, taking pictures of the tritium like every week or month or something, for as long as possible (10+ years), maybe? so it gets dim and dim every year.
I've got a couple ampoules of tritium manufactured a couple years apart. The new one is marginally but still obviously brighter than the old one
There is a movie out called 'The Radium Girls', and what it did to these women was devastating, because they would lick the brush and apply the radium paint, causing cancer in their jaws ,mouth, and even death occurred.
I’ve seen the movie and knew about the story beforehand. Radium can be very destructive to the body if you are ingesting it.
13:03 It's a pure radiophile porn. Thanks man fo this luminescence
There's a beach northwest across the Forth from Edinburgh (Dalgety Bay) that was used to dispose of WW2 aircraft. It's currently in the process of being screened and cleaned of all the radioactive particles that were left behind from those old gauges.
......wait until your postal carrier sees this.
That time lapse is beautiful
Thanks.
with the 2 planes that crashed at the dallas airshow, b17 and king cobra, do you think rescuers/salvage to crash sites of older planes should be concerned about radiation/contamination from the broken gauges?
No, because the gauges usually don't break during a crash and the radium isn't pulverised, it's radiation is only dangerous when interested
There would be a possibility of some very small amount of contamination but nothing to really worry about.
Many but not all older planes have had their avionics upgraded to more modern instruments.
I bought some of these and sealed them in a ziplock bag and came back the next day the contamination was kind of mind boggling
Radium converts directly to radon. So radon and radon daughter contamination would be extremely high.
I remember seeing a documentary on British television about the 'Radium Dial' girls. I saw it when I was about 11 years old, and the horror of what happened to them has stayed with me for over 40 years. The way they were treated by the company who denied responsibility, their state government and federal government as they sought compensation, made me tend distrust authority ever since.
It was amazing...the level of corruption from all different sides. From the corporation all the way up to the government.
I have a directional indicating gyroscope of that era. I have a Geiger counter on order to test it for certain.
I used to fix clocks when I was a kid, think I encountered a few radioactive ones but that was before I knew about it! Had a drawer of clock hands which might have been a bit spicy! At least it was in a drafty shed where radon couldn’t build up. I do remember picking the paint out of some hands once 😮. It was all thrown away decades ago.
Those radium paint flakes are no joke. They can be very radioactive.
Amazing channel! Please keep the videos coming! :)
Would be interesting to perform a wipe test on each gauge and see what reading you get, presumably you would just pick up radon decay progeny, but could also pick up and particulates of Radium.
I have some Radium painted objects and store them in Air tight containers although it’s probably not necessary.
Thanks for the great content.
I've done a test with my AirThings radon meter to see how high I could get it in my cabinet where I keep some radium compasses and that got decently high for not being an airtight container.
@@RadioactiveDrew that’s a good idea, I like the Airthings products.
Cheers. Jamie.
@Brit That's a great idea, to distinguish in between radium and radon decay products, you will have to repeat the measurement within several hours, if the levels drop significantly, there is probably no radium contamination on the outside parts of the gauge. However, you could still get some reading caused by Pb-210, with half-life about 20 years. Make sure that you use proper detector, sensitive to radiation given off by the radionuclides in radium decay series.
@RadioactiveDrew >>> Is there some way you could -- *AFFORDABLY & SAFELY* -- build some kind of 'sealed glove box' to disassemble those instruments and then apply new zinc paint to the radium bits to allow the glow to be visible to the naked eye?
*EDIT→* I posted this comment early on in a _re-watch_ of this video. What you said about the paint escaping those instruments if they are poorly sealed pretty much answers my question.
You can safely take these apart without contaminating your work area. But applying a fresh coat of zinc sulfide won’t work as good as what was originally applied. From what I’ve seen the radium and the zinc sulfide needs to be mixed together and applied in that mixture. I know they use to take old damaged dials and put the parts that had the radium paint on then in a solvent of some kind. This would dissolve the paint and make it to where they could recover the radium and mix up a fresh batch to make new dials.
Those clocks look really interesting. What are all the movements on the leftmost from the timelapse?
The let most clock has a flight time subdial and the one at the bottom is a stopwatch subdial. Here a link that talks about the clock. grail-watch.com/2018/04/02/russian-mig-clock-for-your-desk/
the music an the glow of the dials make it look beautiful for being radioactive
The glow from those dials was pretty cool to see. Takes a little bit for your eyes to adjust to the dark to be able to see them glow.
@@RadioactiveDrew yes but the camera makes it easier to see it beauty
@@joshuaryanferguson3702 of course, the camera can really show the beauty in these pieces.
@@RadioactiveDrew yep
@@RadioactiveDrewsorry to reply a year later but whats the song at the intro of the video?
The radioactive paint is easily removed, to restore the instrument. In a vacuum gyro, the gas will enter by the filtered intake and exit to a plane's venturi. Turn and banks, such as the Pioneer Gen A Motor/ Bendix, are favorite navigation devices. Give them to airport kids and watch how fast they wind up back in the sky.
Great video Drew; where do I get a copy of that chart at 6:06?🙂
Here's where I got my chart. nuklid.shop/
@@RadioactiveDrew Thanks Drew 🙂
My husband's mother worked putting the glowing part into watches for years, she was diagnosed with cancer after about 10 years and passed away. 🤢
The ball (inclinometer) doesn't tell you whether the airplane is level. It tells you whether your turn is coordinated. It's the thing above the ball, the turn coordinator, that tells you if the aircraft is level. Don't get that wrong - it will lead to a graveyard spiral!
Good stuff 🎥🤙
Thanks.
The "bubble" is an inclinometer to tell if the aircraft is coordinated
Thanks!
Thank you so much. I've been getting so many comments its hard to keep up with everything.
So I have a few of these instruments. What kind of distance do I need to keep from these instruments to be safe?
Well the closer you are the more intense the radiation is. Personally I keep my radium doped dials in a safe in the garage. But if I had the room I would have them in a display case in an office that’s away from everyone else. All my display areas are either too close to me or family.
These instruments generally aren't detectable more than a couple meters away, so at this distance you're relatively safe from external exposure. The issue with these is the radon gas they produce, which will contaminate everything in proximity to the instruments with radon decay progeny. Best to keep them outdoors or in a VERY well ventilated area (basically not in your home)
You mentioned that you were going to put these dials in your safe with your other highly radioactive items. Can you do a video on the items in your safe?
I plan to do a video about the safe.
@RadioactiveDrew I’ve never seen a Blue Radium Turn Bank indicators before. Could you link me the specs or model number / Stock number or NSN? I would love to snag one for my collection. I have orange and Green Ra-226 but I would love to snag a blue one. The blinker oxygen flow indicators are yellow radium. And several Radiacmeters were painted with Green Ra226 some even with Pm-147. I love your content and I’ve been a long time viewer. You’re one of the ones who got me into Spicy collecting.
Pretty sure the blue ones were those larger back gauges in the video. I'll see if I can get into my radioactive collection and look up a serial number...it might be in the video to be honest.
@@RadioactiveDrew thank you that would be so helpful and I would be very appreciative. One of the turn and bank indicators was listed with the service tag and I have that one but the blue ones are elusive and I believe it all comes down to serial number / manufacturer. No rush just whenever you have time. Thanks Buddy.
@@kesslerfox9858 Here's the info from the blue gauges. Type: 1708-1A-A1-667. All the other numbers are just patents.
@@RadioactiveDrew thank you So much man I appreciate it!
@kesslerfox9858 no problem man. Hopefully you can find one.
Hey Drew. Some time ago i came across 3 old instruments of an Vampire de Havilland at a flea market. I wasnt aware of the danger of them and they were really old and dusty. After that, i was at a burger Restaurant and i cant remember if i washed my hands before eating. Is there something you can do afterwards or is it just living with it and hoping nothing was ingested?
More than likely you are fine and will be. If the instruments were bare faced, meaning no glass, that wouldn’t be great. But it also wouldn’t be that much of a problem. With radium ingestion I know the body thinks it’s calcium and incorporates it into bones. But I’m not sure how much of it goes through that process and how much passes through the body. So I wouldn’t worry about it. Plenty of other sources of radium in our daily lives…like in ground water that is naturally occurring.
@@RadioactiveDrew alright, Thank you. That takes some Pressure. Already tried to meassure the radioactivness with a radiacode, but didnt get a meassurement through the cardboard Box. Was little bit to scared of taking them out. Do you know if it is possible to get some result with it?
Great job Drew! Where did your decay chart come from at about 6 minutes?
Here's where I got mine nuklid.shop/Karlsruhe-Nuclide-wall-chart-100-x-139m-with-booklet-72pp-10-th-Edition-2018
Sorry. My numbers for airline flight were off by a factor of 10. An interesting place to check out would be the US Capitol building in Washington DC. It was built with some interesting sandstone walls.
The pilots flying these old planes must have been getting absolutely blasted by gammas sitting in front of an entire panel of these things lol
I can only imagine their absorbed dose.
@@RadioactiveDrew You could calculate the absorbed dose of a WW2 pilot by measuring the current level of radiation, calculating the area of the paint, looking at a photo of a cockpit and estimating the total area of all the radium paint in the cockpit. Would be a cool episode.
Nonsense. They are sitting away back from them. They have less radiation than an old radium dial watch. But you can pick up 10mR or 100uS from one long haul airplane ride in a modern jet at 35 to 40 thousand feet from natural radiation.
@@vinquinn A) I don't believe you. While the inverse square law will obviously still apply, the sheer number of these things is going to produce a nontrivial dose. and B) 10mR from a single flight is absolutely ridiculous, the real value is like 1-2mREM and the annual average pilot dose is in the range of 227mREM.
Beautiful time-lapse at the end. Those dials look truly amazing. Is this how the paint would've glowed at night back in the day when it was fresh? I read all about the radium girls (the women who painted these dials) and this paint would get stuck to their hair, clothes and skin and it would cause them to glow in the dark at night. Truly awful thinking about it and knowing what happened to most of them after, but I always wanted to know how the glow might've looked like.
I would like to believe that when the paint was new and for at least the first 10 or so years it would glow that bright. Kind of hard to say because I've never seen a fresh batch of radium paint.
@@RadioactiveDrew They glowed so brightly that you could tell they were luminous in poor light, not just complete darkness. Using military spec dial painting on a multi-engine aircraft like a B-29 Superfortress, you could see around the entire cockpit from the instrument panel glow.
Imagine the pilots sitting in front of them for hours a day.
I would imagine that would be a nice extra bit of exposure.
It looks like during the timelapse that the radiation was hitting the camera sensor just like in your other video with the thorium coated lens! Unless that was just noise.
Cool weather station.
Some are pretty entertaining to look at.
I watched the documentary of the radium girls.... what a SAD way to go and the "torture" the girls went through just to satisfy their bosses.
Nice time lapse!
I bought an alarm clock from an antique store; it is HOT. It's the hottest thing I own, getting over 20k CPM at times.
Radium can be very radioactive. Alarm clocks are usually on the lower end of activity because they didn't use nearly as much radium as what you would find in aircraft dials.
1940's and still glowing is amazing. 95,000 counts per minute. I recently purchased some new open gun sights that use Tritium to allow use at night. The manufacturer says, the production of tritium from lithium-6 is done using breeder ceramics. They say, Tritium will glow on average 20 years. Those Turn Bank Indicators put my gun sights to shame.
If you had gun sights made with radium instead of tritium they would be way more radioactive. As in I would be concerned carrying it around close to your body for long periods of time. The tritium gun sights don't really emit any radiation.
Not suggesting anyone actually do this, but I wonder if you could paint new Zinc Sulfide paint over the dials and restore the glow.
I wiped my dirty radium compass that was left outside for months, and when I wiped it, the napkin got contaminated and it read at 20kcpm. Was it the radium dust or radon daughters?
More than likely radon daughters. Of course it depends on the condition of the compass. If it’s still sealed I would think radon daughters.
@@RadioactiveDrew It was a wwii paratrooper compass.
Good afternoon I’m a 64 year old man when I was a kid in the 70s Mattel made a glow in the dark paint call bug juice any idea how radioactive this is or ever heard of it thanks. Thanks I enjoy your shows
Are you talking about that Kenner's lightning bug glo juice paint?
If you are that's just standard Phosphorescent paint that needed to be exposed to light to charge so that it'll glow in the dark. No radioactivity in that.
Oh. I had two radium aircraft dials 4 feet away from me as a kid when I slept, 8-12 years old. 😵
@RadioactiveDrew >>> Great video.
Thanks.
@@RadioactiveDrew>>> You're Welcome.
{I did not see your comment until just now.}
amazing!!!!!
I wonder if the mailman knows that he's delivering radioactive devices? It's probably no big deal, but it would give me pause.
These gauges are fairly active but they aren't a problem for anyone spending that short of a time near them.
Are tritium glow-in-the-dark markers as bad as radium ones? Especially when you're talking about stuff like concealed carry guns where they're pressed right up against your body.
Not even close. Tritium gives off some beta radiation but most of that I blocked by the glass containing the tritium…it can give off some low energy X-rays from the beta radiation hitting the glass. Radium gives off a lot of hard gamma radiation which is difficult to shield against.
how long of exposure are you using on that last time lapse ( not the moving rig)
I think it was over 15 second exposures. Might have been as long as 30 seconds. I don’t have the files in front of me at the moment.
May i ask which Geiger counter u use?, im very curious how radioactive the netherlands can be with various places and objects
I use the Thermo Scientific Radeye B20.
40 years ago we went to a fancy dress party, I used that paint but with it being brittle I used clear tape over the top. Then radiation wasn't a consideration even though our uni had a trip to a nuclear power station and thermal efficiency and entropy and enthalpy was ever every day words. What is omitted from that paint, is it mainly alpha particles?
Reflecting back I am surprised that it was available.
The decaying process It emits alpha, beta and gamma radiation, also as it decays it also creates Radon gas.
To be honest you could make a video of how to microwave a burrito I would watch it just because of your video’s production quality 🌯
Hahahahaha...I'll see what I can do there.
is it legal to buy and keep this stuff in the US?
Yes, its strongly encouraged to not take a part objects like this. But you can own them with no problems.
do you have the model numbers of these gauges? on ebay there are a lot of them, some even very similar, but none identical as yours
I don’t have the model numbers on hand. Buying gauges on eBay and hoping for them to be radioactive has been pretty hard in my experience.
@@RadioactiveDrew ok! When you get them in hands again, and remember to answer here, I’ll be extremely grateful
I didn't realize radium was like fluoride in the way it's taken up by your bones. Not a good time
Could you paint zinc sulfide back onto the dial and have it glow like it did back when it was new?
Did pilots experience adverse effects from being sat in front of the gauges for many hours?
Meu pai tem uma bussola de avião velha. Lembro que desmontei ela a muito tempo 🤦🤦. Deve esta perdida em algum lugar
that sliding time lapse needs to be labeled nsfw good gracious!
Do military aircraft ball compasses emitt alpha particles?
Some can be painted with radium paint that glows in the dark. But the emitted radiation is mainly going to be in the form of beta and gamma radiation. Radium gives off a lot of alpha radiation but that radiation is mainly blocked by the glass of the compass.
@@RadioactiveDrew I seen some compases have radium paint even outside glass. In airplane era maybe people figured out that painting outside glass is dangerous?
@RynaxAlien I’ve seen those compasses as well, with radium paint on the outside. But some of the ones I’ve seen had their cover glass removed, I’m sure because it was damaged. Most of the time the radium paint was behind a barrier of some kind so that it wouldn’t rub off.
What happened to the pilots who sat in front of them for hours on end?
I had a radon report when buying my house as it's an ex mining village
Unless your house is inside a uranium mine I'm sure the radon level would be fine. The level of 4 pCi/L set by the EPA isn't based on any science. Its a number that is extrapolated backwards from high doses of radon found in uranium mines that were found to give miners lung cancer.
like the shirt !
Thanks. I sell them on my site. uraniumstore.com
My father has an altimeter from an A-4 that somehow returned with him after his Naval service ended. I wonder if it's radioactive ☢️.
Could be. Best way to check is to get a Geiger counter.
I've collected a few radium dials recently, and now I'm wondering about radon. Do you do anything to mitigate the radon, or is it not that big a deal?
Everything I'm reading online says we're all gonna die from radon.
The dangers of radon have been oversold to the public. Even with that said I usually don’t keep my radium dials in the house. The level of gamma radiation is a bit much for my taste. If I had an area to display them with more distance from people I would. But for now they stay in the safe.
So like 280 uSv/hr? I bet it goes through the roof if you remove the glass...
Just took a reading from it using a gamma filter on the Radeye B20, got 145 uSv/hr. The radium source in the level section can be removed and it would easily max out my detector. Might do a video on that in the future.
There is a contact email in the About page for the channel.
@@RadioactiveDrew thanks man
Would your mailbox become at all radioactive itself, after that exposure? I am thinking, no. But I am unsure about at what point such exposures become assumed by the secondary material.
No, it's only Neutron radiation that can activate other materials to become radioactive. The Radium just emits Alpha, Beta and Gamma.
You could find there some contamination by radon decay products. You could find Po-218, Pb-214, Bi-214 and Po-214. These would decay rapidly, the overall half-life being around 30 min. To accumulate enough Pb-210 and its decay products you would have to wait for a few years at least. You can find more about the principles involved by searching for "radioactive equilibrium".
If you put the tritium tubes closer to the radium does the tubes glow brighter or recharge the hydrogen/ helium decay?
The beta decay from tritium is what makes it glow, well that and the phosphor inside the tube. So putting radium next to the tube wouldn’t do anything. Beta radiation has a very hard time penetrating glass. It also wouldn’t recharge the tube as that isn’t the mechanism in which tritium is made.
Can’t believe your handling these without gloves.
I did a bunch of wipe tests on them and didn’t find any external contamination. They seem sealed up enough for now.
@@RadioactiveDrewine leaked like a sieve. But on the point about why one turn bank indicator is hotter then the other. So back in the 1930-50 they would service these gauges. When the glow would dim they would re-apply more of the “un-dark”. Which made them appreciably more radioactive. My father has a traveler from these gauges that says that it needed to be replaced due to the gauge being to dim. They said they re-apply the “Un-Dark” and put it back in stock rotation. Apparently they did this up to the 50’s. Love the content brother. Great video. Those time-lapse photos where Epic! Can’t wait to binge watch the rest.
Wow, those gauges must have been smokin hot. Radium is the one element I run into regularly that I’m very careful around.
@@RadioactiveDrew you and me both. It used to be my favorite element when I was a kid. Now it scares me. Those gammas are so hard to attenuate.
Those gammas are like a battering ram. They have a ton of energy. Not just from radium but from all the daughters.
I'm sure the neighbors love seeing you walk up to the mailbox with a geiger counter.
I’m pretty good at calming nerves.
Introducing brand new iwatch 10. The watch that makes you glow like shining star.
How radioactive is tritium compared to radium? I have night sights on my pistol that have tritium vials.
Those tritium sites are usually very well shielded. I wouldn’t worry about them.
Even if the vial breaks, the small amount of gas will quickly mix with air. It doesn't contaminate its surroundings.
I prefer strontium aluminate to zinc sulfide.
I haven’t run into much of that yet.
@@RadioactiveDrew It’s found in modern, higher end glow-in-the-dark stuff. No radium, thankfully!
Is strontium aluminate actually activated by radiation like that?
@@thesciencefurry it's charged both by heat and by ultraviolet. No radioisotopes required.
Zinc sulfide also doesn't fundamentally require radioisotopes.
@@AmaroqStarwind yeah both are activated by heat and light. But Idk if strontium aluminate is also activated by alpha, beta or gamma. It probably is.
Are they radioactive enough, to be used as a neutron source for a small breeder reactor? Asking for a friend.
Look up Radioactive Boy Scout, or nuclear boy scout.
David Charles Hahn built a nuclear reactor in his mother's back yard using all kinds of different sources, one of them being from old clocks.
He ended up making the neighborhood radioactive.
Unless that was the joke
its called phosphor works the same way as florescent tubes
yes but its glows with out collecting light because of the radiation emitted by the radium
@@kingcanada2588 yeah the radiation excites the phosphor people think its special because its radioactive
I know it excites the copper or whatever activated zinc sulfide
@@kingcanada2588 👍
@@manletopia4801 well it is special because its radioactive. These indicators will glow with never seeing light only because of the radiation coming off of the radium.
Didn’t decide to talk about all the pilots who sat behind walls of these gauges in the cockpit or planes OR how nearly every watch contained radium for many years. Sadly, you’re just another fear monger. You didn’t even explain the difference in available lume from radium paint vs other types of glow in the dark paint.
He does the opposite of fear mongering, he states that they are radioctive and explains the different types of radiation to people who don't understand the differences and realize the different types of risks. Just because somo e talks about the riaks doesn't make it fear mongering, he provides information that the average person doesn't have which lowers the overall fear of radiation, it's not all this deadly stuff that's immediately going to kill you hell a decent amount o it can't even penetrate skin which is talked about countless times in his videos. Just because your mad he didn't talk about a few select things doesn't change how good the information he does present is
He's anything but a fearmonger, how can you call him this if you was to watch anything from him, he's exactly the opposite of a fearmonger. How do you come to such assumptions.
@@noodlelynoodle. I don't get people like this, unless they're selectively choosing what they want to hear and make assumptions, or something else. It baffles me.
Quick question. How exactly do you store these? I bought a ww2 vacuum sealed can with a roller smith ammeter type g-1 a few years back and have it on the top of a shelf in my man cave (I like to collect ww2 stuff, especially stuff that’s NOS or never been opened)
I never opened the vacuum sealed can or anything like that. I tried researching online if these were gauges that had the paint on them or not (did all aircraft gauges have this paint on them or only important ones)
Just trying to determine how much I really want to keep something like this around. Especially given I have pets I don’t want exposed to stuff like this.
Thanks so much in advance! I appreciate ya!
Edit: I guess I should test them first right? Do you have a recommendation of a decent tester that would give me an idea of their potential hotness? Thanks again!
A lot of different gauges were doped with radium. If the gauges are in good condition they shouldn't present any type of risk...as long as you aren't really close to them all the time. Sounds like they are on a top shelf and kind of out of the way. The best way to tell if they are radioactive is to use a Geiger counter of some kind. The cheapest one that I can recommend that will easily pick up the type of radiation coming off of something like this would be the Better Geiger. You can buy it from their site or on Amazon. I did a review of this detector with some other ones czcams.com/video/3ONbwFMBS4Q/video.html
Also, the gauges can produce radon gas but it isn't that big of a problem.
@@RadioactiveDrew thanks my dude!!
No problem…glad I could help.
Aren’t these dials based on Trituim? This video is too long.
The dials have radium in them. Video is as long as it takes to show what I need to show.
They didn't have tritium back then. The QE2 ocean liner had tritium exit signs measured in square feet.
Doesn’t seem long enough to educate you though.
You must be a TikTok user to say a 13 minute video is too long. Must be nice have the attention span of a gnat.
A 13 minute video is nowhere near a long video, especially if it contains good information.
Ugh people like you make me mad.