this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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Science Memes

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Can I lick it? (mander.xyz)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] mathterdark 17 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Can I lick it?

Green - yes, you can!

Yellow, Red, Purple - no, you can’t!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I think yellow is actually fine - a lick is 3 seconds of contact maximum and you're not sucking on it or ingesting it...

Lithium's the only one you'll ingest decent quantities of and it's just gonna taste fizzy and soapy with no real lasting damage, stuff like lead you won't even ingest and even if you did it'd probably be fine in such low quantities, even mercury is probably ok to lick if you're careful

That said, with the radioactive ones you need to be careful of what isotope and sample size you're licking, so licking a huge ingot of U235 would probably do some lasting damage just by being near it, but licking a small piece of U238 is more than likely fine so long as it's solid and not dust

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I'd be careful with emitters that are primarily alpha radiation like U238. It's easy to dismiss them because they're fat diabeetus particles that are simple to stop, but the flip side of that is that they are nasty when they're not stopped. They're a big fat thing going really, really fast, and whatever they hit is going to take a lot of damage.

Maybe the saliva on your tongue will stop it? If your tongue is relatively dry, though, you could very easily get tongue cancer.

[–] NickwithaC 1 points 7 months ago

Purple - I don't think it's possible to do that.