Maybe I Think Too Much

[Stringtyer]

In a past life I worked as a metallurgy technician in a materials engineering lab where I did a lot of different tasks including failure analysis (why did it break) and unknowns identification (what is this gunk). I had all sorts of cool toys including a scanning electron microscope - the ultimate nerd toy. As part of that job, we looked at unknowns for several characteristics including radioactivity (bad, very bad).

That said, I was thinking about the stuff I find when out treasure hunting and got to wondering: have any of y'all ever found anything seriously toxic or radioactive or in some other way dangerous? If so, when did you make the discovery of the danger and were there any negative outcomes?

Again, I'm overthinking everything but am wondering if I need to start carrying my Geiger counter with me when I go dump diving.

 

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[RGINN]

Very cool you had a scanning electron microscope. Did you get to keep it? I haven't found anything I believe to be very toxic, but here in mining country I know a guy who found a jar of mercury.

 

[Megalodon]

In my own former life, I used a scanning electron microscope for part of my master's thesis research. Years later, my wife assembled one from a donated truckload of parts. The frequent trips for liquid nitrogen got a little old.

 

[Stringtyer]

@RGINN ... I wish I had a SEM but it's not something you can just keep in your garage. Ours was mounted on an isolated concrete mass in order to minimize vibrations, required its own power supply and liquid nitrogen cooling system. I will have to admit that it was one cool tool to use. We had an x-ray spectrometer attached to the SEM so we could use characteristic x-rays to help determine unknown items.

We got a new model SEM in the lab and moved the old one to what we called the "hot lab" where we handled any radioactive samples.

I had a chance to buy a nice, older SEM a few years ago, but thought better of it because of the requirements for keeping it alive. Still, I have to admit that working in that lab was one of my favorite jobs.

 

[Megalodon]

I have to admit that I didn't appreciate the SEM as much as my wife did. To me it was just a tool to accomplish a task and an expensive and scary tool at that. To her, it was almost her brush to make art. The pics she made of diatoms would have made great posters. Actually, the pics i made of fish egg micropyles and fish sperm would have been nearly as cool.

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Stringtyer,

I have never found anything toxic or radioactive while detecting.

As a Experimental Physicist specializing in the inner workings of the atom, I was working with radioactive elements for many years; very interesting stuff! As a older and somewhat wiser man, I hope my life on this beautiful planet will not be shortened by such research.

Oh yes, working with liquid nitrogen was a lot of fun...so much fooling around with that stuff.

Doc

 

[Kray Gelder]

A couple of years ago I found a new subdivision going in. They had to excavate large runoff ponds, and they cut through an old undisturbed clay layer estimated age 20-30 million years old. It was loaded with shark teeth, and whale fossils, as well as other sea creature fossil. They spread this clay over the entire site, and I spent several months collecting shark teeth and fossils there. They were not creek tumbled finds, but had lain undisturbed and buried since they settled to the bottom of what used to be the shallow sea covering the east coast lowcountry. Anyway, I discovered at home one day, that they glowed under UV light. I bought a 100 LED UV flashlight, and hunted the site at night. The teeth glowed a bright yellow/green, and stood out like beacons in the dark. I never tested them with a Geiger counter, but I suspect the glow is from uranium, absorbed over millions of years.

Didn't intend to step on your thread, but most of these were found with a UV light.

 

[Stringtyer]

@Professor ... you are quite right about liquid NOx. Too much fun to be had with something that could be that dangerous. I know that if you put a lemon in a dewar flask for a few minutes and hit it with a five iron, it will go into a million pieces.

In all my years working around nuclear power plants and with radioactive materials, I picked up less dose than I did flying from North Carolina to Seattle or by working near the coal pile at a fossil fired power plant. To be exact, I was not allowed to take my TLD with me when I went to a coal-fired plant. Let's not speak of the granite buildings in DC.

 

[Peyton Manning]

once, while helping superman out I had to find and remove some krytonite

 

[Kray Gelder]

Stringtyer,

I have never found anything toxic or radioactive while detecting.

As a Experimental Physicist specializing in the inner workings of the atom, I was working with radioactive elements for many years; very interesting stuff! As a older and somewhat wiser man, I hope my life on this beautiful planet will not be shortened by such research.

Oh yes, working with liquid nitrogen was a lot of fun...so much fooling around with that stuff.

Doc

What an interesting career!

 

[Megalodon]

Wow, Kray, we've never looked at our shark teeth under UV light. We do occasionally hunt at night if low tide occurs then, so now its off to eBay to look for UV flashlights!

 

[Megalodon]

once, while helping superman out I had to find and remove some krytonite

That was you? Thanks for your help.

 

[Stringtyer]

What an interesting career!

It was an interesting work life. While working for the local power generating company (now Duke Power), I did a lot of interesting thing including nuclear power plant QA, teaching nuclear codes and standards, being a metallurgical technician, managing the continuous emissions monitoring system for compliance to Federal air quality standards, and, finally, managing a program of statistically driven maintenance program for high energy steam piping (not something you wanted to go "bang" in the middle of the night).

After I was "downsized", I started on my most significant career as a high school teacher. I taught Drafting, Engineering, and Architecture courses for 15 years. While I think my jobs at the power company were important, nothing was as important or meaningful as teaching young people how to create good mechanical drawings and to use their brains and investigative powers to solve complex problems. I was always proud that my students consistently had the highest test scores in the state. More importantly, I was able to encourage many young ladies (including both of my daughters) into the field of engineering, the hard sciences (biochemistry and chemistry for example) and other traditionally male dominated jobs. I get great joy from notes I receive from my students telling me their success stories.

I have to admit that one of my favorite jobs was working as an on-the-air personality (disc jockey) when I was in high school and college. Way too much fun. Sometimes I wish I had stayed in that business.

I could go on for pages but no one really needs all that detail.

 

[Megalodon]

Stringtyer, I thoroughly enjoyed your description of teaching. My SEM nerd wife was also downsized when her lab changed its focus. She went into teaching Science and spoke of it much as you have. Her favorite stories are of former students who went on to med school and came back to visit her class and say thank you. She retired in the midst of this all-out assault on education and I am enjoying having her join me in fossil hunting and metal detecting rather than seeing her work until nearly midnight every day writing lesson plans, labs, and reading journal articles. Her former principal called last week and asked her if she would consider coming out of retirement to teach HS Chemistry. I was happy that she declined and I didn't even have to point out that the teaching pay would barely cover commuting costs.

 

[smokeythecat]

I found a cluster of small uraninite crystals at the Buckwheat Mine at Franklin, NJ years ago. It read 20,000 counts per minute, which is not dangerous. Had fun for awhile with it with my geiger counter but eventually sold it.

 

[against the wind]

once, while helping superman out I had to find and remove some krytonite

Red or Green??

 

[Kray Gelder]

Wow, Kray, we've never looked at our shark teeth under UV light. We do occasionally hunt at night if low tide occurs then, so now its off to eBay to look for UV flashlights!

They really worked for me. I'm not sure if the UV light works so good on teeth that have been weathered and tossed about in a stream, or on the beach. I think whatever element causes the glow gets leached out a bit. This particular site was freshly exposed. The cool thing was, these teeth in daylight, or with a regular flashlight were the same color as the mud and clay, so you had to search for the shape itself, but that fluorescent glow was unreal. If just the tiniest portion of the tooth was showing, the UV would find it. The largest meg in my photos, I found at night, and only a sliver of one edge was showing. I never would have seen it during the day.

I might suggest you try one of wal mart's 5 dollar UV lights first on the teeth you've already found. In the dark. The 100 Led UV flashlights lights are around 30 bucks, if I remember right. They work well, the $5 ones don't have the range. I was spotting teeth in the dark 20 feet away with the big light. Oh, and a few creepy crawlies too.

Wear the yellow glasses! I went without because they didn't fit over my regular glasses, and burned my eyes a bit. Really. Let me know if you try it.

 

[Kray Gelder]

It was an interesting work life. While working for the local power generating company (now Duke Power), I did a lot of interesting thing including nuclear power plant QA, teaching nuclear codes and standards, being a metallurgical technician, managing the continuous emissions monitoring system for compliance to Federal air quality standards, and, finally, managing a program of statistically driven maintenance program for high energy steam piping (not something you wanted to go "bang" in the middle of the night).

After I was "downsized", I started on my most significant career as a high school teacher. I taught Drafting, Engineering, and Architecture courses for 15 years. While I think my jobs at the power company were important, nothing was as important or meaningful as teaching young people how to create good mechanical drawings and to use their brains and investigative powers to solve complex problems. I was always proud that my students consistently had the highest test scores in the state. More importantly, I was able to encourage many young ladies (including both of my daughters) into the field of engineering, the hard sciences (biochemistry and chemistry for example) and other traditionally male dominated jobs. I get great joy from notes I receive from my students telling me their success stories.

I have to admit that one of my favorite jobs was working as an on-the-air personality (disc jockey) when I was in high school and college. Way too much fun. Sometimes I wish I had stayed in that business.

I could go on for pages but no one really needs all that detail.

Good for you. I admire folks who succeed in leaving a positive mark on the world. It's exceptional.

 

[Megalodon]

They really worked for me. I'm not sure if the UV light works so good on teeth that have been weathered and tossed about in a stream, or on the beach. I think whatever element causes the glow gets leached out a bit. This particular site was freshly exposed. The cool thing was, these teeth in daylight, or with a regular flashlight were the same color as the mud and clay, so you had to search for the shape itself, but that fluorescent glow was unreal. If just the tiniest portion of the tooth was showing, the UV would find it. The largest meg in my photos, I found at night, and only a sliver of one edge was showing. I never would have seen it during the day.

I might suggest you try one of wal mart's 5 dollar UV lights first on the teeth you've already found. In the dark. The 100 Led UV flashlights lights are around 30 bucks, if I remember right. They work well, the $5 ones don't have the range. I was spotting teeth in the dark 20 feet away with the big light. Oh, and a few creepy crawlies too.

Wear the yellow glasses! I went without because they didn't fit over my regular glasses, and burned my eyes a bit. Really. Let me know if you try it.

Thanks for the tips Kray! I found a US seller of these 100 LED UV lights on eBay who has sold about 700 of them and it was only 11.75 so I've got one coming. Thanks also for the tip about the protective glasses. The teeth we hunt are mostly very freshly eroded out of the Calvert Cliffs and have nice sharp edges. My wife actually does very well with teeth embedded in the clay with just a little bit exposed like you described. There is so much competition out there, even at night, that teeth rarely have time to roll in the surf before recovery.

We see plenty of creepy crawlies too even without the UV light so this will be interesting!

Thanks again!

 

[Kray Gelder]

Cool! The Calvert Cliffs deposit is about the same age as my former hot spot, I think, and has a lot of fossils common to those I had found. The UV thing was my trade secret, if it works, now it's yours. Best of luck. By the way, the 6 Alkaline AA batteries are good for about 2 1/2 to 3 hours continuous use, before it starts to dim.