[NewCandle] further adventures of pixie 23

[Jones Beene]

Nick -

> I wanted to report another little result - Yesterday, I took one of the
rolls, got a measurement of about 10,000cpm near the open turn end... 

That alone rules out radon, since it has such a short half-life it would
have already been much lower in counts than a few days earlier, even without
the evacuation.

A look that the possibilities from here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_product

makes me think that it is a protactinium isotope. BTW - you can get a pretty
good estimate of the half-life by datalogging the counts over a few days,
but unless there is a single isotope responsible, the results will still be
an educated guess. The technique for doing this (and the software) used to
be on the Aware site:

http://www.aw-el.com/

Jones