Granite

[Peter-1]

Hello,
I found these nice granite cubes in a shop in Germany ( 5€ only). They should serve as ice cubes. Since granite always contains some uranium and thorium, I wanted to know how well it is detectable. Here is my attempt.

Granit-3.jpg (96.17 KiB) Viewed 2973 times

All expected lines are clearly visible.

Peter

[gwgw]

Quite nice spectrum. What's the overall weight of the granite blocks?

When going to the nearby mountains, I often collect random rock samples to test at home, granite being among the obvious "targets" as it is well known for containing some U and Th. Nevertheless, the uranium series peaks very rarely come out nicely :( Actually, last weekend I went to the Rila mountain and gathered some granite (quite a lot of granite there). But....well, they contributed to just 6 CPS (out of the room gamma background of 121 CPS at that time). And the spectrum had only a weak Tl-208 peak from Th decay with no visible Pb214 peaks from uranium...

This weekend I will take a hike in another nearby mountain, which is again made mostly of volcanic rock. Not much "real" granite there though, mostly sienite (which is very similar and often mistaken for granite). But well, sienite does also contain U and Th, so this time I might have more luck this time.

[Go-Figure]

Nice.
Pretty much matches what I got out of Tuff, they all have U238 and Th232 progeny + K40 unsurprisingly.
I have granite on my list too, but the next one will be something pretty different!

Massimo

[Peter-1]

Hi, the overall weight of the granite blocks is 220 gram.
Peter

[gwgw]

Quite nice photopeaks from that little material. What's the activity in terms of CPS as compared to natural background?

[Peter-1]

Hello,
the background is 15.8 CPS and with granite i have 25.8 CPS.
Peter