{"id":1599,"date":"2022-04-17T13:40:49","date_gmt":"2022-04-17T18:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/?p=1599"},"modified":"2022-10-20T10:40:19","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T15:40:19","slug":"accelerating-radioactive-decay-using-tesla-coil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/2022\/04\/17\/accelerating-radioactive-decay-using-tesla-coil\/","title":{"rendered":"Accelerating Radioactive Decay Using Tesla Coil"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To test a hypothesis that high electrostatic potential may affect the rate of natural radioactive decay I have taped three samples Cd-109, Zn-65, and Po-210 (0.1 uCi each) to the top load of a high-voltage Tesla coil energized to a very high potential – Fig. 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig. 1. Cd-109, Zn-65 and Po-210 samples.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The samples were exposed to few million volts of the coil’s potential for an hour, measured, then exposed for another hour to a somewhat higher potential (harder coil drive), them measured again. Gamma activity was measured before the exposure and after using the setup shown on Fig. 2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig. 2. Gamma spectrum measurement setup.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

To measure gamma spectrum I used a Bicron 2×2 NaI(Tl) probe coupled to a Scionix self-biased PMT base connected to a PicoScope 4262 running PulseCounter software<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cd-109 activity diminished very little after the exposure – Fig. 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig. 3. Cd-109 activity before (blue) and after (red) the Tesla coil exposure.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Although the change in activity is deemed statistically significant (P<0.000), the reduction is only 1% and can possibly be caused by an unknown systematic error (like sample placement inaccuracy).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was no change in Zn-65 activity at all – Fig. 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig. 4. Zn-65 activity before (blue) and after (red) the Tesla coil exposure.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Po-210 activity was measured using the setup shown on Fig. 5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig. 5. MCA-LITE connected to the Eberline AC-3 alpha probe.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The alpha-counting setup consisted of the MCA-LITE<\/a> connected to the Eberline AC-<\/a>3 alpha probe. Po-210 alpha counts appear to have reduced significantly, down 20% compared to the original sample – Fig. 6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fig. 6. Po-210 activity before (blue) and after (red) the Tesla coil exposure.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

These results are encouraging although it is difficult to rule-out sample migration due to electrostatic forces since the Po-210 sample is not embedded in plastic but rather is deposited on a film inside the plastic sample holder. Because it takes a very small amount of material to produce a 0.1 uCi Po-210 source such sample migration cannot be ruled out and may be responsible for the observed reduction in alpha activity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Exposure to high voltage Tesla coil does not seem to affect gamma activity of Zn-65 or Cd-109. However, there was a significant (20%) reduction in Po-210 activity. However, the reduction of the Po-210 activity was not cumulative: the second exposure dud not further reduce the counts, therefore the reduction is most likely caused by the sample migration.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To test a hypothesis that high electrostatic potential may affect the rate of natural radioactive decay I have taped three samples Cd-109, Zn-65, and Po-210 (0.1 uCi each) to the top load of a high-voltage Tesla coil energized to a very high potential – Fig. 1. The samples were exposed to few million volts of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1615,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9osz2-pN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/maximus.energy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Samples-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C857&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1599"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1621,"href":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions\/1621"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maximus.energy\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}