Greetings from the foothills of Colorado!

[Chase]

Hello everyone!

Excited to be here and learn more about gamma spectroscopy techniques. I'm about to begin my medical physics residency focusing on radiation oncology. Some of my first introductions to radiological sciences were through a health physicist teaching a nuclear instruments and measurements course were gamma spectroscopy took up multiple weeks of lab time and included some HPGe detector usage! Since then I've wanted to get back into it and find any possible way to use it for my current studies and research.

Cheers,
Chase

[iRad]

Welcome to the forum Chase!

[Sesselmann]

Chase,

Glad you found our forum, hope you find some interesting information and also hope you share some of your knowledge about how radiation exposure affects humans.

See you around..

Steven

[NuclearPhoenix]

Welcome, Chase! Always good to see new people on the forum.

[Jim Kovalchick]

Hello Chase,
I had no real idea what medical physics was until my son introduced me to it when he started considering when he was an undergraduate in nuclear engineering. Fast forward a little more than a handful of years later, he is a medical physics PhD candidate at Wayne State in Detroit. Besides their filling a vital role in modern health care, I've learned that the breadth of knowledge required of medical physicists is incredible. I look forward to your contributions to the forum and wish you the best in your residency.

Jim Kovalchick

[Chase]

Hello Jim!

Fast forward a little more than a handful of years later, he is a medical physics PhD candidate at Wayne State in Detroit.

That is awesome! I seriously considered that program actually, it is a great program but I ultimately went for the University of Kentucky. Is he going into therapeutic or diagnostic medical physics?

[ColoRad-o]

Egad, another foothills denizen! Welcome, Chase.

Are you connected with Colorado State University (with a well known health physics program)?

For your information, there is a Central Rocky Mountain chapter of the Health Physics Society which has fairly regularly scheduled meetings. Their website is
https://hpschapters.org/crmchps/ and you can contact them by email at crmchps@gmail.com
I am more of a skulker than a participant.

I am a retired physics professor (Colorado School of Mines, which now is an engineering and science school, so talking about geology makes me lose my apatite). I live on the southern boundary of the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge and became interested in gamma spectroscopy a few years back. I'm also a member of the Safecast radiation monitoring network and mapped out all the trails in the Refuge with a GPS-enabled data-logging GM counter. I consider myself a cheap, sleazy amateur health physicist if only because I have done deep dives into the International Commission on Radiological Protection as it concerns plutonium and other topics about which there is gross misinformation concerning Rocky Flats. I'd love to chat sometime, maybe by Zoom, maybe in person. The status of the LNT description at very low doses and dose rates (far from the regime of radiation oncology) continues to evolve fairly rapidly.

Best wishes and, again, welcome to this forum.

[Chase]

Are you connected with Colorado State University (with a well known health physics program)?

Hello!! I am actually! Well, sort of. I got my BS in physics at CSU with a concentration in medical physics. Given they don't have a medical physics program, they just threw me into the first year of the health physics graduate program. It was actually at CSU that I got so interested in gamma spectroscopy as I took a radiation instruments and measurements course with them which heavily utilized NaI detectors and even some HPGe detectors. I'm active in the rocky mountain regional medical physics conferences but not so much in the health physics portion so I might have to check them out and see if there are any conferences coming up that I could make it to easily.

It sounds like you've been part of some pretty interesting projects, I'd love to learn more about them and maybe even get involved myself if I can! I love hiking so if I could manage to combine radiation survey work and hiking, I think I'd really enjoy it. I've actually wanted to see if I could find some samples of natural uranium ore with my basic GM counters though I've never had the opportunity to try. Have you ever found any? There isn't too much online about what to look for exactly so I'd be curious to hear from someone else in the region who might know more about the geology of it.

I would also definitely be interested in chatting sometime if we get the chance, I'm always curious to learn more about this stuff, and the LNT data is also of interest to me for sure.

[RobertD]

Hi Chase,
On the subject of finding natural uranium ore in the wild, I would suggest to check mindat.org for abandoned mines. Normally, you can still find pieces in those areas. Take a UV flashlight with you in addition to your Geiger counter, Autunite for example has very nice fluorescence.
Another good source of information for Colorado mining is https://coloradogeologicalsurvey.org/energy/e-uranium/

Happy rock hunting!

[Chase]

I would suggest to check mindat.org for abandoned mines. Normally, you can still find pieces in those areas. Take a UV flashlight with you in addition to your Geiger counter, Autunite for example has very nice fluorescence.
Another good source of information for Colorado mining is https://coloradogeologicalsurvey.org/energy/e-uranium/

This is great advice! I didn't think about taking advantage of uranium's tendency to be fluorescent to find it, that is clever. Thanks!