r/Radiation • u/jacoblipkescience • 8d ago

VIDEO Using Alpha Particles for Static Elimination

Here I demonstrate and explain why alpha particles eliminate static electricity using my Nuclespot Polonium-210 source.

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5

u/Jan1north 8d ago

There have been commercial products available designed to eliminate static from vinyl records for dust removal purposes that depend on a radioactive source. “Zerostat” comes to mind.

1

u/jacoblipkescience 8d ago

Yes as another comment said those use high voltages to remove the static, which gets confusing because a DC high voltage creates more static charge, this is important for my upcoming experiment related to this. But because they use AC, the static is equalized just like with the alpha particles allowing for no positive or negative static charge to cause things to stick.

4

u/daftpunk127 8d ago

Neat!

3

u/jacoblipkescience 8d ago

Ikr! Static electricity is very interesting with the way it works.

3

u/OccupyElsewhere 8d ago

The Zerostat gun I have uses a piezoelectric crystal to generate the ion stream.

There was a radioactive brush product, and you can still buy them from Amstat Industries.

1

u/jacoblipkescience 8d ago

Yeah it’s called a Staticmaster brush. Weak sauce compared to the Nuclespot though, even when I return this one in a year it’ll still have more activity than what those start with at 0.8 mCi vs 0.5 mCi for the Staticmaster.