How Smoke Alarms Work

Ever looked up at the ceiling, saw your smoke alarm and thought, "I wonder how that works?" Well the simple answer is, "With cunning ingenuity". The first thing to understand is that there are two basic designs to a smoke alarm. The first and the most commonly used design is nuclear powered and is known as an ionisation smoke detector, these require little space are cheap and are far more effective than the other type of detector, which is the photoelectric smoke detector. Ionisation Smoke Alarms At the heart of an ionisation smoke detector is a small amount of radioactive material called Americium 241, along with two plates with opposite electrical polarity. This sensor arrangement is held in an air flowing metal chamber and along with its support electronics is pow View the rest of this article