the.com/sievert
the unit that measures how badly radiation wants to ruin your day
means The sievert is the SI unit of equivalent radiation dose, measuring how much biological harm a given amount of ionizing radiation does to living tissue.
from Named for Rolf Sievert, the Swedish medical physicist who spent his career studying radiation's effects on the body and how to measure and protect against them. The unit was officially adopted in his honor in the late 1970s, joining the small club of physicists turned measurements.
- named after
- Rolf Sievert, Swedish radiation physicist
- banana scale
- one banana delivers about 0.1 microsieverts
- deadly dose
- single sieverts cause radiation sickness fast
- sneaky units
- weights radiation by biological damage, not just energy
- flying high
- a transatlantic flight adds dozens of microsieverts
chernobyl disaster 1986 — reactor explosion released ~5.2 million sieverts of radiation total
fukushima daiichi 2011 — tsunami caused meltdown with peak readings of 530 sieverts per hour in reactor 2
hiroshima atomic bomb — detonation delivered 1-2 sieverts at 1 km radius, causing acute radiation sickness