Using a Geiger-Müller tube, sound-capturing software, and a simple computer program, students measured to reasonable precision the half-value layer of steel in absorbing high-energy gamma rays from a Radium Ore Revigator (pronounced re-vig-a-tor with the accent on "vig"), an early quack medical device. This article describes the process…

Imagine a high school with very few experimental resources and limited budgets that prevent the purchase of even basic laboratory equipment. For example, many high schools do not have the means of experimentally studying radioactivity because they lack Geiger counters and/or good radioactive sources. This was the case at the first high school one…