title: Etched tracks and serendipitous dosimetry.
abstract: Nuclear tracks in detectors that just happened to be there can be found in unexpected places. Eyeglasses, household glass, minerals, objects that were exposed to nuclear explosions, and space equipment on the moon are examples. Such materials allow us to measure doses of past radon exposures, cosmic-ray fluences, fission rates and neutrons. Incidental results include measuring mountain-building rates and deciding where finding oil is likely (or unlikely); in another case erosion rates of surface materials in space are found. New results that assess the effects of hydration layers on the leaching out from glass surfaces of imbedded alpha-recoil nuclei imply that long-term, retrospective radon measurements can be made more reliable by selecting only glass with compact hydration layers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geology, Union College, Schenectady, NY 12308, USA. fleischr@union.edu
authors.forename: Robert L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Fleischer
authors.forename: Sekyung
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Jeremy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Farrell
authors.forename: Rachel C
authors.initials: RC
authors.lastname: Herrmann
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: MacDonald
authors.forename: Marek
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zalesky
authors.forename: Robert H
authors.initials: RH
authors.lastname: Doremus
mesh_terms: D011829:Radiation Dosage; D011834:Radiation Monitoring / Q000379:methods*; D011868:Radioisotopes / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D011868:Radioisotopes