Particle Detectors - Geiger Counter, Scintillation Detector, Solid State Detectors, Neutron Detectors, Cerenkov Detectors, Cloud Chambers And Bubble Chambers
particles rays produced
Particle detectors are instruments designed for the detection and measurement of sub-atomic particles such as those emitted by radioactive materials, produced by particle accelerators or observed in cosmic rays. They include electrons, protons, neutrons, alpha particles, gamma rays and numerous mesons and baryons. Most detectors utilize in some way the ionization produced when these particles interact with matter.
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The Geiger counter is one of the oldest and simplest of the many particle detectors. The counter was developed in the early part of the twentieth century by Hans Geiger and Wilhelm Muller, shortly after the discovery of radioactivity. A schematic diagram of a Geiger counter is shown here. A wire electrode runs along the center line of a cylinder having conducting walls. The tube is usually filled …
Scintillation counters are made from materials which emit light when charged particles move through
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the Geiger counter. Illustration by Hans & Cassidy. Courtesy of Gale Group.
them. To detect these events and to gain information about the radiation, some means of detecting the light must be used. One of the first scintillation detectors was a glass scr…
Similar results with much improved energy resolution, the sharpness of the peaks in the pulse height distribution, can be obtained using solid state detectors made from semi-conducting materials such as silicon or germanium. When properly constructed, the electrical charges released in the material by the passage of charged particles can be collected directly producing a short electrical pulse whi…
A cloud chamber utilizes an enclosed volume of clean air saturated with water vapor. If this volume of air is enclosed in a cylinder with a piston and the volume is suddenly expanded, the temperature of the air falls causing the mixture to become supersaturated. If a charged particle passes through the volume at this time the vapor tends to condense on the ions produced, leaving a trail of water d…
The ultimate in particle detectors are probably those being used and constructed at large national and international laboratories such as Fermilab in Illinois and CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. At these locations colliding beam accelerators have been built which produce collisions of fundamental particles, such as electrons and positrons at CERN, and protons and anti-protons at Fermilab. At various …
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