A Master's Degree in Urine
Nov. 18th, 2008 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
funraniumWhen you are in the field of radiation safety, you'd think that your day would revolve around a very narrow niche of safety that makes your activities very predictable, even when things go horribly wrong.
WRONG!
That's because the field of radiation safety means that you could potentially be doing anything...but with radiation at the same time.
This is why I get to play with 2L of my own urine tomorrow. I get to take a 1mL sample from a 24hr average (read: a big bottle o' whiz), add scintillation cocktail, and load that sample into the liquid scintillation counter to see if I've had a Cs-137 uptake.
I should count my blessings that I don't have to evaporate the sample first to do it on the other counter because that is smelly.
Why would I have had a Cs-137 uptake you might ask? I'll let you read the somewhat sanitized NRC report (or watch the video clip where there is a brief glimpse of me surveying myself behind the glass door; I'm the less fat guy wearing Tevas on the wrong day) regarding the place I was visiting in Texas last week. I swear I had nothing to do with it, I was just there, man. It's a good thing I was too. While they are manufacturers of excellent instrumentation, they don't have a lot of experience actually using it. Should've charged for my services, but that's not what a Good Samaritan does.
That's what a master's degree will get you, kids. A chance to play, scientifically, with your own urine. There are some health physicists out there who do bioassays like this all day, everyday...
BE COOL, STAY IN SCHOOL!
WRONG!
That's because the field of radiation safety means that you could potentially be doing anything...but with radiation at the same time.
This is why I get to play with 2L of my own urine tomorrow. I get to take a 1mL sample from a 24hr average (read: a big bottle o' whiz), add scintillation cocktail, and load that sample into the liquid scintillation counter to see if I've had a Cs-137 uptake.
I should count my blessings that I don't have to evaporate the sample first to do it on the other counter because that is smelly.
Why would I have had a Cs-137 uptake you might ask? I'll let you read the somewhat sanitized NRC report (or watch the video clip where there is a brief glimpse of me surveying myself behind the glass door; I'm the less fat guy wearing Tevas on the wrong day) regarding the place I was visiting in Texas last week. I swear I had nothing to do with it, I was just there, man. It's a good thing I was too. While they are manufacturers of excellent instrumentation, they don't have a lot of experience actually using it. Should've charged for my services, but that's not what a Good Samaritan does.
That's what a master's degree will get you, kids. A chance to play, scientifically, with your own urine. There are some health physicists out there who do bioassays like this all day, everyday...
BE COOL, STAY IN SCHOOL!
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no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 07:35 am (UTC)Urine has a long and complex history within ritual, too.
Enjoy!
no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 06:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 09:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-11-19 09:32 pm (UTC)