This Electronic D&D Dice Set Is Driven by Nuclear Decay, Courtesy of a Chunk of Uranium Ore

The Science Shack YouTube channel has put together an electronic dice device with a difference: a piece of uranium is housed inside, decaying to provide entropy for a true random number generator (TRNG) to ensure rolls are as fair as they can be.

"This is a complete set of Dungeons & Dragons dice," the channels presenters explain of their creation. "Besides being all electronic, the big difference here is that this set is using radioactive decay to make it completely random. We decided on using a standard Dungeons & Dragons dice set because it covers all of the most commonly used dice configurations: The four-sided, six-sided, eight-sided, ten-sided, twelve-sided, twenty-sided, and 100-sided dice. But, seriously, the main reason for doing this how cool is it to have a nuclear dice set?"

Inspired by a project in which cosmic radiation was used as an entropy source for random number generation, the Science Shack turned to something closer to home: Uranium, or at least a uranium ore. "We could have used americium or tritium," the pair explain, "but we're using autunite — a mineral which continues uranium."

Having purchased a small piece of autunite online, the makers fashioned a "fuel cell" from a plastic tube. Putting only enough of the autunite in place to provide the entropy required, triggering the detector at a rate of roughly one detection per second, the makers built a housing with two displays, an Arduino Mega 2560-compatible microcontroller hooked up to a Geiger counter, and an internal battery — the "fuel cell" providing entropy but not power.

"After turning it on a player needs to select which die they want — in other words, how many sides — and how many of those dice to roll," the presenters explain.

"Then we press the big red button and radiation is detected and electronically converted into a random number. While the dice are being rolled you can see and hear the radiation triggering the Geiger counter and the uranium fluorescing. When the dice throws completed each dice value is displayed as well as the total amount."

More details are available on the Science Shack YouTube channel.