Remember "Things of Science"?

[Ritchie200]

My latest issue of Make Magazine had an article about those old blue boxes - that I had completely forgot about!  What an exciting thing it was to run to the mailbox, hoping to find it waiting, and the mysteries inside!  Between my Tom Swift books and these boxes, I was in heaven as a kid!  Yes, I will accept the Biggest Geek award now....

My all time fav was one about Atomic Energy.  They actually had a little 1"x1" plastic square impregnated with uranium oxide, direct from our friends at the Atomic Energy Commission!  They said it carried a very low level of radiation.  Years later my dad took it to the University he was working at and checked it with a Geiger counter - he never brought it back home.....  I did use it to do an xray image on some photo film and it worked VERY well!  Can you IMAGINE something like that happening today!?!?!?!  Another experiment was to build a cloud chamber.  This was the COOLEST thing I have ever seen.  We used dry ice and alcohol (? can't remember...), a big pickle jar and some black felt.  You could actually see the trails left from alpha, beta, and gamma particles as they passed through the jar!  I wish I could do something like that for my kids.

I also remember one about bearings, "space age materials" from weather balloons, seeds, metals, .....gosh I can't remember all the subjects.  I guess my parents threw all that stuff away.  Man, life was a lot more exciting back then!  

Sigh....
Jim

[PRR]

> a little 1"x1" plastic square impregnated with uranium oxide

My great-uncle was involved in invention of practical polyethylene (think Tupperware). One product of the lab was a brilliant orange bowl, 12" diameter. The orange was Uranium Dioxide, a fairly common pigment in ceramics. He gave it to my grandmother, she had it in her kitchen.

I scraped several salads out of that bowl.

Later he did remark that it might be best to display it, not eat from it.

Somehow I never had any ToS.

[Willabe]

> a little 1"x1" plastic square impregnated with uranium oxide
Later he did remark that it might be best to display it, not eat from it.

    Once again were looking for an improvement and some work and some don't      , my dad thought abs. (fire proof, cheap, what could be wrong -?-) He thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but....   Everyone through time/history of this world goes through this to some extent.

Long live us all! We still need inventores to keep moving forward, but still use common scence.


     Brad