

GeigerCrowd: Collaborative radiation measurement project [Japan] - sasvari
http://www.geigercrowd.net/

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nathanhammond
The difficulty in reporting on radiation is trying to provide useful
information to an audience unfamiliar with the field. In my opinion the trick
becomes to explain the levels in a context the audience can understand so that
you don't have to first cover:

1\. Differing units (grays, sieverts, rem), prefixes (micro, milli...), and
rates (instantaneous measure expanded to hourly rate, hourly average, year).

2\. How you come in contact with radiation (consumption/direct contact of
radioactive material, exposure).

3\. Alpha, Beta, and Gamma radiation.

4\. The linear no-threshold model of risk applied to ionizing radiation. (And
the debate surrounding this.)

5\. Background radiation.

6\. Localized radiation versus full-body exposure. (thyroid, radiation
therapy).

7\. The limited number of data points we actually have.

8\. Logarithms. (Radiation typically being presented on a logarithmic scale.)

And I'm sure that I've missed including things that are useful to helping
understand radiation. All of this combines to make it really easy to post
alarmist numbers (100 times normal radiation levels!) that may still be well
under accepted values.

A project I worked on to help try and address providing context is here:
<http://www.radiationinfo.org>

~~~
VMG
great website!

one suggestion though: as I move the slider in Siever scale, the number
display isn't as smooth as it could be because the number of decimal places
varies and the text is aligned in the center.

~~~
nathanhammond
Where were you when I did <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2378114> ? :)

You make a good point. In order to keep peace with the designer, centering
stays, but I can set fixed decimal lengths.

Update: I just took a look at a fixed length decimal (GitHub commit:
<http://bit.ly/dTyXUF>) but I find the extra digits to be really distracting
on the right hand side, somewhat getting in the way of understanding.

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veidr
The pervasiveness of radiation data, notably from random people putting their
Geiger counters on ustream but also from the government (daily per-prefecture
updates on municipal water, rain water, and atmospheric fallout), is the only
thing keeping us sane in Tokyo.

So I really appreciate this idea, and indeed I wouldn't feel as reassured that
we're okay here if the government was the __only __source of that data.

<http://www.ustream.tv/channel/千葉市稲毛区の放射線量>

<http://atmc.jp/water>

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swaits
<http://www.radiationnetwork.com/>

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turbodog
<http://www.rdtn.org/>

