Physics In Ken Silverstein's 'Radioactive Boy Scout'

Landon Hattaway
Mr. Sanders
Physics
6 November 2015

Introduction
In The Radioactive Boy Scout by Ken Silverstein, the story focuses on the early years of David Hahn and the reasons for his scientific interest. He shows that with reluctance anyone can become great at a task if their mind is focused on it. It all started as just a small interest as a young child but eventually science became an obsession for him. He saw it as a way to escape his unordinary and tough life at home. His mom was a schizophrenic and eventually committed suicide, while his dad was never around very much nor supportive of the things he did. David’s dad did influence him to become a boy scout. The boy scouts altered his life greatly and he became more engulfed in

It was not just these influences but he also had a deep interest in science and chemicals. He was alone for the early part of his child hood because of his father’s work habits and his mother’s illnesses. This being the case, David found it easy to become engulfed in books but more specifically The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments. The Golden Book was a large factor in most of his early experiments, and even played a part in some of his experiments in the later years. This book contained many science experiments and different types of chemical reactions. He used this book as a guide to learn how different experiments work, and also showed David how he could create his own tests. Although his mother and father were not very supportive he did have one family member that was. His grandfather always backed him up and realized he had a love for science. Then, the boy scouts came along. His father saw this as a way to get David out of the house and create more of a social life. What he did not know is that David was using the perks of being a boy scout to obtain more chemical to further the needs for his

A breeder reactor is used to create fuel or generate electricity from the neutrons that are given off. This intrigued David because it was the largest project he had to that date. He created this in his mother’s potting shed. This idea came from one of his father’s old books that he had borrowed. This potting shed was eventually discovered by the U.S. government and was seen as a huge health risk due to the amount of radiation emitted. The EPA then evacuated his town and buried this potting shed so no radiation could seep out.
Key Idea 5
This book ties into our first semester of learning about chemistry. Learning how things react with each other played a huge role in his experiment. Learning the charges and what each type of atom does is very important when working in this field. Being able to do the equations of heat transfer and how the heat transfers connects to the type of things David had to know and what he encountered. Many concepts that were learned by David were also learned by our class this year. A large amount of the things we did tie into this book but David did it in a larger scale and took it a little bit further.