Demistifing ion chambers and snake oil

[Max]

Hi all,
I've read a lot of posts regarding LRL divices like mineoro
and others (dowsing kind) and I'm very sceptic that one of these
devices actually works.
I mean I know a dowser-man (seems like a navaho
shimano or something) hanging around some strange wood pieces that
(he said) he uses to find water and other things (and belive me, he can
-I see him using the dowsing "Wood"- really identifing a water plane
I know that exist and that is still undocumented in our areas) but
can't explain how he phisically do that. Don't know if he can "detect"
other things , like a gold ore.
I read about ionic chambers here and just want to explain what I know
of these devices do demistify some aspects.
There's nothing magic in a ion chamber. It's simply a sensor really close to
a geiger tube but with some differencies.
A tipical geiger tube is made of thin
aluminium with a central electrode (usually tungsten) with some low pressure gas
inside (usually argon but could be some mix of helium-neon-argon plus some
hi-density organic compound like ethanol), then polarized with say 600-800 volts
between outer electrode (tube) and central electrode. Some types have also one or
more "windows" to allow alpha particles (he-nuclei) to enter in the tube: windows
are usually made of thin silicates or plastic material. Normally a geiger tube
detect only gamma-rays (hi freq. em radiations like x-rays) and beta (accelerated
electrons) becouse haven't any window. In simple words it works like this:
when a particle enters the tube it can hit some atom of gas (argon) ---> the hit
produces a ionic pair (the ionized atom + an electron).
The hi voltage field makes the pair elements really accelerated
and a cascade effect (more ions and electrons) is then produced resulting in a current
flowing in the tube caused by the elements of the pair moving to electrodes,
thus recombining and then resaturating the tube with non-ionized gas.
It's a kind of cascade amplifier with a very fast recovery time (so counts can be
accurate also in presence of a huge number of radiations per second) with a
time-unit-counter. It's becouse all radiation units indicates the ammount of
radiations detected in the time unit.

A tipical ion chamber looks like the geiger tube described above BUT:
- usually dry air (normal pressure, 1 ATM) is used
- low voltage is required (usually under 100 volt, in some cases under 10 volts)
- there isn't any window
- the process here hasn't a cascade amplification so the little pair generation
and recombination cause currents that are really small (usually under 10^-12 amperes)
- a hi-impedance , very low bias and leakeage amplifier is needed to detect signals
- modern ion chambers all use chopper amplifiers (to avoid dc drifting/noise)
- EVERY KIND of ionizing RADIATION can produce pairs here
So, every ionizing source (sun light, uv-light, ac fields, natural radiation -rad gas mainly-,
cosmic rays, x-rays, ...but also your digital watch, your mechanical watch with radium activated
night markers, your mobile phone, your mp3 player, you favourite radio station etc. etc. etc. )
can produce pairs in the chamber if the signal is enough, and also a low humididy can perturbate the
pairs migration in huge variations.
Anyway, I repeat, EVERY KIND OF IONIZING RADIATION --> ionic chambers do not detect ions if they
aren't in ionizing radiation behaviour, I mean they must have a hi-speed (like alpha particles) to penetrate the
(thin) walls of the chamber. Actually no alpha particles can be detected with a normal ion chamber,
becouse of the absence of the thin silicate/plastic window : typical small chambers are fully metal
enclosed, and even if ions are highly accelerated they simply can't break the barrier as other things
can (like e.g. hi-energy photons).
So normal ionic chambers DO NOT detect ions from the outside environment but internal ion pairs generated
by some radiation (mostly x-ray, gamma-ray, uv and strong ac/rf signals).
The strange assert that a ionic chamber DETECT ION PAIRS (OR COLLISIONS) FROM THE OUTSIDE WORLD is then
an scientific false, covered with good advertising champains.
The assert that ion chambers CAN DETECT GOLD IONS ONLY is completely false becouse of they works on
electric charges recombination and the electron charge value is the same for every chemical element
(in the real world).

So, if any of these strange things really works for sure it's not by external target IONIC DETECTION.

Best regards,
Max