Is your house radioactive?

The definition of nature is elusive. We often think of nature as those naturally occurring things outside like trees and lakes and birds but there is so much more. There are rocks, enzymes, stars and gravity. All of these things are more are part of nature.

 The natural world encompasses more than we can see with our eyes or touch with our hands. The parts of nature that we can't see are particularly fascinating.

This winter I've launched a new web series on my Secret Nature YouTube channel to explore one of these hidden secrets of nature. That secret is radioactivity.

Growing up during the cold war, radioactivity was closely associated with nuclear war and I learned to fear the sound of a Geiger counter. Those clicks always meant contamination in movies. They always meant something had gone wrong. There's nothing inherently wrong about the process of radioactive decay though. It is completely natural, the result of the underlying physics of particles. Sure, too much is bad for you but humans are bathed in radiation daily from both terrestrial and cosmic sources and our bodies have evolved to tolerate the daily small doses. If they hadn't life would have perished millions of years ago on our radioactive planet.

My online web series is called "Your Radioactive House" because I explore the everyday common objects around your house that are radioactive. You might be surprised what things you can find when you start to look.

Armed with a Geiger counter I go exploring and reveal what I find. Come along on the journey. You might just learn some physics and history along the way!

~Kirk

Click the video to watch the teaser trailer for Your Radioactive House