Wow this sounds a bit dangerous, no?

When we go back over the fence Taylor’s Geiger counter brushes against his thigh and he realizes that his pant legs are radioactive. So, he rips off his pants and sits there in his boxer shorts, trying to figure out what kind of radiation it is. “It’s not loose contamination, “ he says,  “so it makes me think it’s been on the pants for a while. But, how? My jeans are generally not radioactive at the start the day!”

Apperently this is the aha moment:

When Taylor was 11, he found out that his grandmother was dying of cancer. He and his grandmother were extremely close. She was his biggest supporter and had allowed him to use her garage as his laboratory for a long time.

He had been experimenting with radioactive materials for over a year and he had this epiphany in his garage. He asked his grandmother if he could have some of her urine to test while she was going through nuclear medicine procedures.
He tested it with a Geiger counter and also dissected bits of her tumors and lungs, which she had coughed up, and threw them in a petri dish. He knows this is weird but this is the kind of kid he is. Then, he started thinking about how people around the world get these medical isotopes. He learned that they’re made in these multi-million dollar cyclotrons and they’ve got to be shipped by private jet to the points of distribution, and then moved very quickly because they have such short half-lives. They’re also extremely expensive.

We like outside the box thinking and it is this type of logic that will take science to the next level.  And below is a video of the inventor telling his story!

thanks to national geographic for the great info

thanks to Chas Redmond for the pic