GEIGER COUNTER tells YOU IF YOUR DISHES ARE RADIOACTIVE

[Henrik] really turned out a nice little Geiger counter board based on a chilly war age Geiger tube.

It works in much the same way as other projects along the same lines. It does run on batteries if needed, which is no small feat since the tube wants high voltage to operate correctly. as well as the video after the break shows it spitting out readings to a terminal window when connected to a computer via USB.

But what really caught our eye is the radioactive source material he used for testing. since he didn’t have anything on hand he had to order something, as well as ended up going with a couple shards from a dinner plate. A radioactive dinner plate to precise as well as it’s a brand name you’ve probably heard of before. Red Fiesta Ware obviously used to be radioactive. It’s even mentioned in the intro to the Wikipedia article. Go figure!

One other thing we noticed was [Henrik’s] method of interfacing his multimeter with a breadboard. one of the project photos shows the probe with thin wire wrapped around the tip. We presume this is to make it simple to plug into the breadboard.

Despite this little digression away from the main project we did really enjoy learning about his build. as well as you can see him showing it off in the clip after the break.