In reply to Eric Walker's message of Fri, 24 May 2013 21:16:37 -0700: Hi, [snip] >(I know you don't think there are fast particles -- this is something I'm >still keeping tabs on and haven't convinced myself of yet.)
Neither have I. I have a Geiger counter and a smoke alarm. When the detector is right in front of the Am241 pellet it rapidly registers a high count. Put the detector behind the PC board on which the circuit was built, but at a closer distance to the pellet, and it registers nothing. So much for calculations showing that lots of alpha particles would readily be detected. (And these are 5 MeV alphas. The p-B11 reaction only produces alphas with less than 3 MeV). Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
