We've been told over and over again how smart crows are, but they still astonish us now and then. Logically, we know that flying should be more thrilling than anything humans can do, but we all know in our hearts how much fun it is to slide down a snowy hill. This crow has commandeered a piece of trash to act as a sled! Or, more accurately, a snowboard since he stands up on it. He flies up to the top of the snow bank, then slides down on his snowboard. When the snowboard gets away, he chases after it before some other crow can get it.
Give them a little time, and the entire flock (or murder) will be raiding the garbage for flat pieces of plastic. Then they'll organize their own X games to compete with each other. After all, crows are pretty smart. -via Nag on the Lake
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From what I've seen before, it basically had four radiation detectors: Geiger-Muller tube counter (which unfortunately is and was kind of expensive, leading to cheaper kits with everything else), an electroscope, which is something you can build from household items, a phosphor based detector, and a cloud chamber. A cloud chamber lets you see paths of ionizing radiation and building one was one of the more fond memories I had from middle school. The kit also had a selection of small radioactive sources , something else still available from educational supplies (price has gone up a lot in the couple decades since I last bought some). These are not particularly dangerous as long as they are kept outside of the body, like a lot of things in our day-to-day life.
And for that matter, elemental and many other forms of mercury have virtually no evidence linking it to causing cancer in humans, with some evidence in animals for methymercury. It is still a very dangerous substance without care and not something I would give to a kid, but it is not dangerous because it causes cancer.