Electromagnetic radiation emitted from different homes
Abstract
Radiation is energy that comes from a source and travels through space at the speed of light. This energy has an electric field and a magnetic field associated with it, and has wave-like properties. You could also call radiation “electromagnetic waves”. Radiation is the process in which energy is emitted as particles or waves, ¬¬¬¬ or the complete process by which energy is emitted by one body, transmitted through an intervening medium or space, and absorbed by another body.
However there are different types of radiations emitted in nature and these include the following; Alpha radiation, these are heavy positively charged particles emitted by heavy metals such as Uranium and Radium. Such radiation can be stopped by a paper sheet, beta radiation which are entirely electrons, more penetrating than the alpha particles and can be stopped by an aluminium sheet of a few millimetres, gamma rays which are electromagnetic radiations similar to X-rays, light and radio waves, however these can be stopped by a thick wall of concrete or lead, neutrons are also emitted as radiations are uncharged particles and do not produce radiation directly but interact with other atoms of matter to produce alpha, beta and gamma radiations, are stopped by thick walls of concrete.
Background radiation is the radiation that is present in the natural environment. Natural background radiation surrounds us, and makes up half of our yearly exposure to radiation and its amount is different in every place or location that is different locations have got different background radiations. Reasons or factors could be; radionuclides present in Earth’s crust, radionuclides created by cosmic rays hitting atoms in Earth’s atmosphere, human activity and industry, including by products and wastes from processes like water filtration and treatment, weather, which can help radionuclides from nuclear weapons testing settle back to Earth from the atmosphere.
Most house hold appliance use the low to mid frequency electromagnetic radiations. Such appliance are microwaves, ovens and toasters. For the microwaves, the non-ionising radiations they use does not make the food radioactive. The microwaves are also produced when the oven is operating and these are absorbed by food and in the long run the food gets heated, as for the toasters, they use infrared radiations to heat pieces of bread by having its coils glow red to produce infrared radiation.
In Uganda and other countries, the most common sources of radiation in a home are the sun, building materials as they contain nuclides such as radon that can found in the building walls, electrical equipment such as non-ionising radiation used in the microwaves, natural radioactive nuclides in public drinking water, food irradiance in consumer products and other kinds of naturally occurring nuclides in other consumer substances.
Yonggang Cui etal Brookhaven national labs, used a radiation detecting software called the Test Gamma PixTM and used the SUT. The software is available for both the android and iPhone operating systems and it uses the smart phone camera to detect and measure ionising radiation. The software analysed digital images produced by a smartphone camera to determine the local gamma ray radiation environment, by comparing the dark images with those with the bright pixels caused by photons from the radiation source