That was a very interesting article. I'd vote for the neutrinos -
they must be good for something. Hey, what if neutrinos are actually
what makes radioactive decay possible, and the randomness of the
decays is just the randomness of arrival of the right kind of
neutrino or combinations of them to trigger a particular reaction?
I think a simple way to get a usable signal without adding to the
home radiation lab may be to look at the shot noise component of the
MOSFET output signal of a common ionization type smoke detector,
operated in a sealed chamber to avoid atmospheric effects. The decay
of the Am-241 generates the average gate current that keeps the alarm
from going off when unhindered by smoke particles, but maybe there's
a big enough AC signal available representing individual decay
events, already sensed and amplified to a decent level by the MOSFET
circuit - depending on the bandwidth. If the individual events aren't
discernable, maybe there's some useful information in the current
envelope, although it would probably be pretty unstable over the
requisite measuring time frame.
It may be worth taking a look, just to see. Or not.
Ed
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