8/19/2026 at 11:45:51 PM
I've wanted to build a geiger counter in the past but I've always been discouraged because it seems unlikely that I would be able to use it for anything other than maybe testing one or two things in my house like smoke detectors.by why_at
8/20/2026 at 1:09:06 AM
You won't get much from the americium in smoke detectors. They're alpha emitters, and ordinary Geiger counters will not detect alphas.You can build an alpha detector.[1] Even a sheet of paper or a modest distance in air will stop alpha particles, so the detector has to be exposed and the emitter has to be close. A detector inside a glass tube gets nothing from alphas.
[1] https://hackaday.com/2022/01/22/detecting-alpha-particles-us...
by Animats
8/20/2026 at 4:17:53 AM
[dead]by ipdashc