Our schools have failed yet again.

[kickaha]

Phosphorescent seafood freaking out folks

"It was like a bright eerie light was shining on it," said Peters, who works for a natural food store.

"I thought that maybe it had been overirradiated, you know, too much radiation. Now, whenever I buy seafood, I take it home and turn out the lights."

----

...

Radiation does not make ordinary crap glow except in very rare cases, you dipshits! If you see the glow, you're dead, unless it's Cherenkov radiation in a suitably deep pool. Got it? Good. Gawd.

What do you want to bet he protests against food irradiation from this position of complete ignorance?

(BTW, it was naturally phosphorescent bacteria found in ordinary seawater.)

Comments

[franktheavenger.livejournal.com]

Come on, the first guy works at a 'natural food store.' Of course he's going to fear what he thinks isn't natural. Hell, I bet he thinks uranium isn't natural.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

Worse: I saw a woman outside of Three Mile Island being interviewed a few years ago. She had cancer, and she was suing the reactor company. Meanwhile, her basement tested positive for levels of radon around 800x normal. When asked why she didn't suspect that instead, she said, perfectly seriously... "But that's a *natural* radiation."

One of the few times I've seen a reporter totally speechless.

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

If you see the glow, you're dead

Counter-example: Tritium watch hands (or gun sights*).

What do we bet you protest *for* food irradiation from this position of complete ignorance? :b

*I don't use 'em. Not because of the radiation, but because my brother's got a set, and in the dark, they turn his face into a big, green-glowing *target*.

[kickaha.livejournal.com]

"Radiation does not make ordinary crap glow except in very rare cases"

The tritium is energizing a florescent compound. Not ordinary crap, but a very particular type of crap. Distinction was made. Florescence is a common enough occurrence that I would have suspected most folks reading this could make the leap to 'special category of substance'.

The 'very rare cases' are such as Cherenkov radiation (supraluminal photons shedding energy as the stabilize in a new medium), or when primary radiation causes nuclear destabilization to the point that it creates new radioactive atoms in the target. If there's enough of that that you can see a glow, you've almost certainly absorbed enough to be toast.

Neither applies in the case of food irradiation, and only someone who horribly flunked middle school science would think so.

[georgmi.livejournal.com]

Nope, it's ordinary crap because 'most everyone is familiar with the use case and most of those folks have direct experience of it.

And most folks are almost certainly *also* unaware that it isn't the tritium itself providing the glow directly; look at how often radioactive objects are portrayed as glowing that exact green color.

My middle school science class's ultimate culmination was making an erupting volcano by igniting a compound (which compound I cannot recall) by way of a magnesium fuse, resulting in a lovely ash cone some five or six times the volume of the original compound. School didn't teach me anything about the structure of atoms until high school chem, or anything substantial about fission and fusion until college. In other words, even somebody who passed middle school science with flying colors could be utterly clueless about radiation.

(Don't you *love* how I can attack every little point you make, without in any way disproving (or even addressing) your actual argument? How people even put up with me, I have no idea.)

You do realize that the end conclusion of this, and in fact almost all of our discussions*, is that willful ignorance is the default state of mankind, right? Not a thought I needed before my coffee this morning. :)

*Except for those discussions that lead to the conclusion "mmm, boobies".

[ssandv.livejournal.com]

I dunno about *your* middle school science, but I'm pretty sure most people's doesn't really explain fluorescence. I think your position is pretty weak here. You...must...chill... ;-)

Besides, having fluorescent material around isn't a special case anymore, it's called a energy-efficient light bulb. I'd even go so far as to call them "ordinary".

And if the radiation low in neutrons or photons, you're probably not toast because it doesn't penetrate well--your clothes will protect you from betas, and your dead skin will protect you from external alpha radiation--but either one could still make a fluorescent surface glow. Radon kills because your lungs don't have a dead skin layer to protect them once you get the gas in there.

But it's a funny story nevertheless.

[keridwen.livejournal.com]

Bioluminescence is the coolest thing ever...