ERASMUS -Radiation

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RADIATION. VOLUME 1

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CONTENT Can radiation be both – a curse and a blessing?

Measuring and blocking out phone radiation Prevention against radiation Radioactivity and atoms UV Light The Particle zoo What are microcontrollers?

Designed by Ossi Tuuttila Pyhäjoen Lukio - Finland

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ABOUT

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Can radiation be both – a curse and a blessing?

The main idea of our project is the cooperation between European students in working on a central socio-political topic with a natural scientific emphasis.

During the whole project period students in all the partner schools worked together on the topic.

The suggested project can be divided into two main stages. In the first year 2018/19 (stage 1) students will help each other to understand the physical basis of different kinds of radiation and their biological effects on human beings.

materials with a focus on their absorption behaviour, their shielding behaviour, the relevance of certain technical devices and institutions for politics and the economy as well as the effects on health and environment.

Students will also need to find out about national limit values for radiation and European legislations.

These results were presented and discussed during the meetings. They will help to get a deepened knowledge of the status quo as they are interdisciplinary and transnational outcomes.

The students will also improve their skills in According to the ques- doing natural scientific retions that the students search. develop, various central aspects can be studied In the second year (staby different groups of ge 2) students will exstudents, e.g. certain fre- pand European strategies quency ranges of electro- based on a good compmagnetic radiation (such romise between a) requias x-rays, mobile phone rements of an economic radiation, radiation of dif- development that result ferent material particles in demands e.g. in terms (such as Alpha radiation, of communication, energy cosmic radiation)), the supply or medical enginexamination of different eering and b) demands of

health care.

the schools.

Moreover, students will progressively take on responsibility as well as a common self-monitoring for the course of the project.

Then delegates of the schools will discuss their strategies and ideas during the transnational meetings and will try to find common perspectives.

At first, solution strategies will be found within

The basic idea of Euro-

pean cooperation through integration of students, teachers and parents as well as through collaboration with partners in economical, scientifical and political branches will be promoted and realized.

time in the other countries and enjoy there their spare time. And go e.g. on boat-tours, trips or also family-excursions, bowling or something individual with the new friends or exchange-partner as an example do sport or go in The students will live in the restaurant. guest families during the

Measuring and blocking out phone radiation On the second day of the Erasmus meeting Tuesday, the 13th of November 2018 in Hamburg, the students were split into different groups, each with its own set of tasks. This article reports about, what the mobile phone radiation group did on that day.

The group ‘s work started with a presentation about the effects of phone radiation on the human body, as well as what form of radiation it as, and what steps one can take to block the radiation from affecting one ‘s own

body.

The group continued on with an experiment to show the strength of microwaves and which materials can be used to block them out from affecting objects.

The experiment presented how metals, such as aluminium can block out radiation despite being as thin as a sheet of paper or using metal bars which are turned in such a way as not to allow the radiation waves to pass through.

After the experiment the students were asked to create anti-phone radiation items. The group

ended up making a collection of head coverings, as well as a glove and a phone case with a layer of aluminium in them which made them able to block out the harmful radiation.

All in all, the students were very successful in creating rudimentary protection from the radiation. Most of the items blocked out more than half of the radiation normally emitted by the phone which was used as the test-subject for the experiment.

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Prevention against radiation On Tuesday we were in school and wanted to learn more about our topic „radiation “. After having heard a very interesting explanation from Mr. Kröger about how to build microcontrollers, we separated the group into three and started working.

One of these groups was ours. We worked on the prevention against radiation. First of all, two German students told us theoretically about stopping radiation. They told us which material to use and showed us some results through an experiment where they measured the intensity of electromagnetic rays that had crossed the material.

After knowing about the

theory, we wanted to invent some cool products on our own, that we can include easily in our everyday life. Even though we expected it to be quite easy (just put together some metal and some clothing), it turned out into a very challenging process.

In the end all of our inventions worked, but seemed to be more like a costume than anything else.

Even though this was not our intention, it was very funny to present our results on the last day. We build up three hats, including one unicorn hat, a glove, phone cover and trousers.

All in all, we had so much fun that day experimen- and working on somet- these physics. We really everyone helped to make ting with all the material hing creative inside of all want to say thank you to that day unique

Radioactivity and atoms When most people think about radioactivity, they imagine dangerous x-rays or exploding nuclear power stations.

Well, they may be alarmed to know that radiation is actually everywhere. In your home, at your school, everywhere.

Background radiation is everywhere. Animals, rocks and plants all naturally emit levels or radiation -even humans!

There are different types of background radiation: including cosmic radiation and environmental radioactivity from natural radioactive materials

like radon and radium. As well as these, there are artificial sources of radiation, for example radioactive waste from nuclear power stations and radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing.

good reason to. X-rays are common procedures in hospitals although there are many risks involved. When the x-ray radiation is absorbed into our bodies, it can damage molecular structure and cause harm.

Many people fear the The harm caused can be word ‘radiation’ with through hair loss, skin

burns and increased risk which can stop the illness of cancer. spreading. In addition, it can be used to steriliAlthough it can be ze medical equipment as seen as dangerous, it is it kills the bacteria witalso used in many good hout heat – which would ways. Alpha radiation is destroy the equipment used in smoke detec- itself. tors to prevent fires and gamma radiation is used in treatment for cancer

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UV Light UV light is a part of the electromagnetic spectrum and it is all around us even if our eyes can‘t detect it.

The wave length is shorter than 450 nm usually ranging from 380

all the way to 450 nm.

The concerns about UV radiation is that the pigments in our skin absorb UV radiation and this can kill our cells from inside causing our cells to

mutate and then multiply in our body which is how tumors are created.

UV radiation is absorbed in the ozone layer, this is why destruction in the ozone layer which is

caused by aerosols and CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), is a health concern as it increases the risk of melanoma & skin cancer.

We use the UV radiation for ultraviolet radiation

in hospitals to clean me- also to convert cholestedical equipment they are rol in into vitamin D. called germicidal lamps.

When the staff are using them, they have to wear protective equipment.

People use UV radiation

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What are microcontrollers?

A microcontroller is a control device that has a microprocessor, if you just want the definition. However, I think most people can't do anything with that, so I'll try to simplify it and give examples. First off: a microcontroller is basically a small computer

on a single circuit. It includes one or more CPUs (central processing unit), memory (that thing stores information for immediate use) and programmable input/output peripherals on a single chip. The task of a microcontroller is to govern one specific

operation. They are in many different machines like vending machines or robots. Since microcontrollers have enough onboard memory, most of the time you don't need additional computing components and you can attach sensors and ot-

her components. Microcontrollers are using C, Python and JavaScript as programming languages, even though they originally used assembly languages. As an example, we are using our microcontroller. Our microcontroller is fitted with

a UV sensor and a GPS module. With the help of the embedded WIFI, we send all the data gathered by the instruments to the database for evaluation.

The information comes with the position of the Measurement (it measures UV radiation), becau-

se of the GPS module so we know exactly, where the data comes from. We build it first, after that we programmed it, so that every time it gets data, it will send it to the site if it has internet.

The Particle Zoo Let’s not lie to ourselves: science, physics especially, can be pretty hard.

That’s why teachers and other experts are constantly trying to make up new methods that would help the students understand each concept better. One of those brilliant ideas that undoubtedly stimulates one’s imagination and thus, makes it simple to comprehend is called the Particle Zoo. Each of those cuddly plush toys representing subatomic particles has a

different description and personality, come in various weighs, shapes and sizes, oftentimes figuratively referring to the particles’ actual masses. During one of our Erasmus+ lecture, done by misses doctor Vogt, teacher of physics in the hosting school Gymnasium Süderelbe in Hamburg, we had the chance to meet the Particle Zoo en face, talking about atomic structure and the many new discoveries in this field.

Although the fun cha-

racters could also be for entertainment purpose, they are of great help in school environment and appealed greatly to the audience, youth without necessarily a specialist background, but intrigued by the subject. Thanks to the subtle touches and the professionalism with which the set was created, it was still connected to the real-world counterparts and scientifically accurate; take the neutron neutrinos who are all as the Particle Zoo, the for our Erasmus+ project with a neutral expressi- dressed up like little nin- quantom physics sudden- exchange students. on, or the hard-to-detect jas. Having had such a tool ly became a piece of cake

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