Kansas Citian Paul Scott aims to raise $5,000 on Kickstarter to help bring his product, neuPhone, to market.

For those who understand what neutron—not gamma—radiation is, or wish they did, Kansas City engineer and scientist Paul Scott has a Kickstarter project that may pique their interest.

The neuPhone is a smartphone neutron radiation detector that Scott hopes to take out of the prototype stage to be readily available for anyone at home, work or in the classroom as an education and discovery tool. Neutrons are “roughly ten times more effective at causing biological damage” then gamma or beta radiation, according to the product’s Kickstarter page, and are particularly damaging to soft tissues like the cornea of the eye. Large neutron sources include nuclear reactors or particle accelerators.

The prototype uses a “patented specially etched silicon wafer” filled with a “lithium-floride compound” to interact with neurons and runs on an iPhone 5 with its own lithium-ion battery that lasts up to 600 hours between charges. It shows a counts per second rate or a dose rate. Dose can be selected to be either real-time or accumulated, “If you want to put the system somewhere and let it run for a month you can simply check on it every once in awhile and know the accumulated dose over that time,” according to the page.

As of noon on Friday, five backers had pledged $775 of a $5,000 goal ending May 15. Pledge rewards range from a T-shirt to becoming a member on the board of directors at Scott’s neutron radiation detection company, U2D Incorporated.

Credit: Photo and video from Paul Scott’s Kickstarter page.