How 'Bright' is Deadly Radiation?

hey guys backyard scientist here I was wondering what if we could see dangerous radiation how bright would it look like if we could see it I was thinking about this because I was watching the TV show Chernobyl on HBO the firefighters just ran right into the burning reactor building totally unaware of any dangers he takes message and how could they know what did the firefighters even picks up a chunk of graphite from the core and it was so radioactive later they said he was holding four billion x-rays in his hand so I was thinking what if we could see the radiation coming off of that graphite how bright would it look like to our eyes and how bright what a lethal radiation dose look like how would it compared to a normal everyday household light bomb first let's take a look at different doses of radiation and see what effect they have on our body one way to measure radiation exposure is in Gray's and it stands for one Joule of energy absorbed per kilogram of matter now let's say that I'm 70 kilograms it would take 70 joules of energy to equal a whole body dose of one gray this amount of radiation not great not terrible one gray is enough to cause mild radiation sickness with nausea and vomiting but typically not that big of a deal 10 Gray's of radiation on the other hand is well terrible and after the initial sickness you'll feel better but not for very long because death occurs within a month or two due to the radiation destroying your immune system now if you've received 30 Gray's of radiation you won't have even have time to worry about much because the typical survival rate after a dose like this is on the order of a few days so anyway now we know what different doses of radiation would look like how they compare to a lightbulb this is a 25 watt incandescent bulb it consumes 25 watts of electricity that means it consumes 25 joules per second of electricity now these lights aren't very efficient only about 5% efficient at turning electricity in to light the rest gets turned into heat so basically this thing is outputting only about one Joule per second of light energy so if I'm about this far away it means I'm only receiving about 0.1 joules per second of energy so if this light was radiation it would take me hours to receive a fatal dose of radiation a well-lit room like this typically has about 1 watt per square meter of light that's hitting the walls so that means if this was radiation I would receive a fatal dose in about ten minutes no no my preemie don't get radiation I'll protect you it's like who cares about me save the bone now in full Sun the amount of energy that hits the ground is about 1,000 watts per square meter so if all the sun's light was replaced with dangerous radiation you would receive a fatal dose in three seconds one one thousand two one thousand dead so we know that deadly radiation is invisible we can't see with our eyes but we can't indirectly observe its effects so in the TV show Chernobyl there is that big blue pillar of light coming off of the core and now because the air was so radioactive there was so many radioactive particles zipping around that it was ionizing the air and causing it to glow it's beautiful so if you ever come across this glowing rock in the woods that's glowing a dull bluish purple walk away run away because that is deadly radiation people have observed this before and didn't know they were in danger in Brazil there was an accident where a worker cut open a radioactive source from a radiotherapy unit to treat cancer and he took it home and showed his kids and they were picking apart it's a radioactive material and playing with it because it was glowing blue they were spreading it across the floor and rolling it around rolling around in it because they thought it was some magical substance so I guess even if you could see radiation you might not know that it is dangerous and the workers that disassembled this core they had to get the fingers amputated they had burns on their hand like the size of the radioactive material so yeah invisible radiation like that is such an abstract concept that even if you come across it you might not recognize what's going on right away but you gon learn so this is what our deadly radiation source would look like at nighttime I say on one meter away that means I would be receiving about 3,600 joules per hour or give me a fatal dose in about 10 minutes that is basically the same kind of radiation dose that you would be getting from the elephant's foot will through the reactor core at Chernobyl so take me 10 minutes to receive a fatal dose at dis distance now if I backed up to 2 meters away right here 2 meters that means that I would be receiving a dose of 900 joules per hour that means it would take me almost 40 minutes to receive a fatal dose of radiation and if I move back even further to five meters away or about fifteen feet it would take me four hours to receive a fatal dose of radiation not too bad back here at five meters away thanks to the inverse-square a lot the farther one you get from it the exposure drastically decreases from any point source like a light or radiation exposure so yeah I always want to keep your distance from a giant radioactive lightbulb in the middle of the night except the mosquitoes get fried suckas alright so I changed my camera settings so this is what it actually looks like to my eyes at nighttime now like I said before this is if you were standing one meter away this is what it would be like if you were standing at the reactor core of Chernobyl the elephant's foot you know ten thousand rotten Jin's for per hour it would really light up that whole area and you would know if you could see you would know to stay far far away from that giant bright light look at how well it illuminates the whole yard you could still see the ballista out there you know you can yikes you know the closer you get the more radiation exposure you're getting and yeah don't go towards the light if it's radioactive no all right guys that's the end of this video I know I didn't blow anything up this time but hey you learned something and that's why you guys come here right I hope anyway I got you guys next week with something pretty cool see you then bye

Channel: TheBackyardScientist

Views: 956,071

Rating: 4.8848257 out of 5

Keywords: chernobyl, radiation, radiation sickness, How bright is radiation, Dangerous radiation, Backyard scientist, the backyard scientist, thebackyardscientist, backyardscientist

Id: NT_1L6o5HXE

Length: 5min 36sec (336 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Oilrigrandy]

The radiation incident in Brazil is a very interesting read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident