Fake Trinitite

Seriously- should I consider giving her iodine? Can cats have that? Would it help?

Seriously- should I consider giving her iodine? Can cats have that? Would it help?


No. Yes. No.

Jess, all kidding aside, unless your cat has extraordinary dentition I don't think he/she would even try to chew on a trinitite specimen. It is, after fused silica sand and, although somewhat brittle, would not be fun to chew on. I would think an intestinal obstruction from the plastic bag would be the greater danger.....

Don

Does your scintillation counter respond to your cat? Can you monitor the progress of the trinitrite? Don is right.

Ok. I'm no troll. I'm a RA badged worker in the petroleum industry, I work with RA all day, I really have got a piece of lost trinitite in my apartment somewhere. It measures out around 3 milirem an hour on my detector. I have some certainty the pet cats responsible for the mislocation. She sets off my detector but only barely. Not as much as after I've taken RA medical contrast. So she def didnt ingest the Whole rock of titianite but almost certainly some dust from the bag or something. I'm no medic but is there anything a vet could even do?

Any animal suspected of swallowing a toxic substance should be taken to a veterinary surgeon without delay, not treated with home remedies.

Will do. Very embarrassing, got pet poison control . Set me back 65 dollars and I need to feed her minced pumpkin for a week plus get her a bath.

Jess,

I wouldn't be too concerned about the cat.

1. The cat most likely would not eat a piece of Trinitite.

2. Even if the cat did eat it, it would pass through in a day and there would not be any induced radiation. If it didn't pass, you would have a constipated cat by now.

3. If the cat ingested some of the dust into its lungs, there isn't much to be done. The cat will most likely be long gone from natural causes before it gets lung cancer.

4. I have handled thousands, yes thousands, of pieces of Trinitite and none have had rad levels greater than 0.5mr/hr and most are far less than that. Since you say that you measured 3mr/hr, I would be suspicious of the origin of the material.

Good luck to the cat and I hope that you find your specimen of what ever it is.

Cheers,
Gene

Sorry to resurrect an ancient thread, but others may be interested.

I am definitely not a rock hound, I am more interested in the Manhattan Project and thought some trinitite would be nice to have. I just bought a small piece from Allison at Blanchard Rock Shop in May 2012.
Very happy.

Jeff,

If you are interested in the Manhattan Project you might like these books.

The Day the Sun Rose Twice - The story of the Trinitiy Site Nuclear Explosion
Prof. Ferenc Szasz

The Los Alamos Primer - First lectures on How to Build an Atomic Bomb
Robert Serber

Gene

The very largest piece of real Trinitite I've seen is less than a pound. Anything larger is likely to be desert slag from a rocket motor. Trinitite always has a frothy interior created by gas bubbles. The larger the specimen, the larger the voids are likely to be. A Geiger counter is the quickest way to see if the material is most likely Trinitite. A 2-in. diameter GM tube will read between 200 and 1500 CPM above background for most specimens. Some pieces having what looks like a greyish coat of sand can read upwards of 3000 CPM due to fallout that fused on the top surface. Anything weighing a pound or more should be highly suspect. I'd like to see a picture of the 5 lb lump to see if it passes visual identification.

I like my specimen of Trinitite

We recently received at the museum here at White Sands a very tiny piece of light blue Trinitite, maybe 1 cm across, the first of that color found. It was sent to Los Alamos for analysis. It seems like the coloring agent in the piece is calcium. It was found by a child during the October 2011 open house and turned over to a Public Affairs person by his father. I'll try to get a photo of it, pretty unique.

Darren

Darren,

Thanks for the clarification of the blue color. We have, on occasion, found glassy "robin’s egg blue" streaks in a few of our Trinitite specimens. More commonly, we find red (copper), black (?) and white (probably fused feldspar) as we sort specimens. A solid piece of blue is something that we have not seen in the handling of thousands of specimens. If you could post a picture of the specimen, it would certianly be appreciated.

Gene