From: "theother" <theother@EROLS.COM>
Newsgroups: sci.physics.plasma
Subject: Plasma Globe effects on geiger counter ?
Organization: ?


Please allow me to apologize if this question has been asked before or if
it's just plan dumb, I'll try to keep it short and to the point

Why does my Geiger counter go CRAZY near my plasma globe? I have an 8"
"Eye of the Storm" plasma globe and a Monitor 5 Geiger counter(GC). Now I
understand plasma consists of ions and electrons and that's something my GC
is designed to detect (@ certain energies), but how would it project these
particles up to 4" beyond it's glass enclosure? I suspect it's some form of
induction field or RF interference from the high voltage power supply acting
on the G-M tube. My GC has a metal shield to cover the probe window for
discrimination of Gamma rays from Beta and Alpha particles, using this
shield brought the GC reading down to background levels again, but a 2"
thick book over the probe blocked nothing. Was the metal probe shield acting
as a Faraday cage blocking induction or RF? This led me to the conclusion
that these couldn't be Beta particles I was detecting if they were they
would have to have fantastic energies to penetrate the book, something on
the order of soft X-rays (bremsstrahlung from glass? not very high Z) . I
don't think X-rays are the answer as any consumer X-ray sources I can think
of like TV's are internal, shielded and have warning labels. This leaves me
with induction field or RF interference from the high voltage but I don't
know. Can someone explain this phenomena as I'm sure there is a simple one.

Thanks for your time,

Interesting side note: The guy who sold me my plasma globe would place a
loop of steel guitar string around the globe and the tip of the wire would
emit a continuous spark up to 1/2" long to conductive materials, it would
arc to any material that was conductive (people included). He used the spark
to mark a small "t" onto his fingernail as a demonstration. He zapped me
with the spark once but it really didn't hurt much beyond the initial
contact. Fingernail boy said the pain was proportional to time the spark was
held in one spot on the skin and that finger nails didn't hurt at all. I
never played with this aspect of the globe after my purchase because someone
told me it was bad for the globe. The manual for their globe said not to
wear rings or allow metal to contact the globe during operation (my used
globe had no manual). I must say my globe seems none the worse for wear
after it's "abuse" and it has served well for 12 yrs.of albeit intermittent
normal use flawlessly.




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