this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
6 points (100.0% liked)

Hacker News

686 readers
384 users here now

Posts from the RSS Feed of HackerNews.

The feed sometimes contains ads and posts that have been removed by the mod team at HN.

founded 5 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago

TIL:

In a classic classroom demonstration, alpha particles can be blocked with material as thin as a piece of paper. This means that shielding batteries based on alpha-decay is relatively easy. In the past this allowed plutonium-238 nuclear batteries to power pacemakers, until they were superseded by lithium-ion batteries.