Someone a while back gave an idea on Hack-a-day. Using a radioactive substance to generate random pixels on a webcam*, take that data and THEN randomly choose values based on that range! Nice no?
Well, theres one catch. Getting a radio active substance
heheh
Its not as difficult as we might think. You know those smoke detectors on the cielings of some office building, They can be used fairly easily. From how stuff works, " Inside an ionization detector is a small amount (perhaps 1/5000th of a gram) of
americium-241. The
radioactive element americium has a half-life of 432 years, and is a good source of
alpha particles."
*
How safe is it? from
Smoke Detectors & Radiation | Radiation Protection | US EPA:
Quote:
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As long as the radiation source stays in the detector, exposures would be negligible (less than about 1/100 of a millirem per year), since alpha particles cannot travel very far or penetrate even a single sheet of paper, and the gamma rays emitted by americium are relatively weak. If the source were removed, it would be very easy for a small child to swallow, but even then exposures would be very low because the source would pass through the body fairly rapidly (by contrast, the same amount of americium in a loose powdered form would give a significant dose if swallowed or inhaled)
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*BEST SOURCE OF PROJECT (Also the Image is from there):
Inventgeek.com - Alpha Radiation Visualizer - Overview
P.S: Sometimes its not neccessary to use any of this fancy, awesome radioactive stuff. Just increase the exposure level and/or change the brightness and see some random pixels on your screen! This may/may not work. you know what these are? Can be cosmic rays, or random particles (sub-atomic), or just electric interference.