Detecting the Small Radioactivity of Ceramic Artefacts

Ceramic artefacts built many decades ago had some uranium oxide among the components of the finish in their surface, thus possessing a small radioactivity. Although these may only be found as vintage objects, still terracotta or porcelain recent objects may produce some amount of radiation due to the isotopic composition of the raw material from which they were built. Experiments with a Geiger counter, discussed in this Section, may in principle be able to detect such small amount of radioactivity.