If you want to keep costs right down for a large array, burned- out fluorescents would probably work as well as new ones
Tony Webb
Interesting DIY cosmic tube
- Steven Sesselmann
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- Real name: Steven Sesselmann
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Re: Interesting DIY cosmic tube
Robert,
Nice work on the muon detectors. I am tempted to try this, I have three 2' long geger tubes that were given to me by another member of the forum, which would be perfect for the job.
Circuit seems to be within my ability too..
Good informative site
Steven
Nice work on the muon detectors. I am tempted to try this, I have three 2' long geger tubes that were given to me by another member of the forum, which would be perfect for the job.
Circuit seems to be within my ability too..
Good informative site
Steven
http://www.gammaspectacular.com - Gamma Spectrometry Systems
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Sesselmann - Various papers and patents on RG
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Steven_Sesselmann - Various papers and patents on RG
Re: Interesting DIY cosmic tube
From my experiences using Geiger Tubes and Scintillator detectors to detect cosmic rays (mouns) I feel I can now say that they are not really loud, in the sense of a sledge hammer loud, although they have plenty of energy behind them, they don't release this energy readily when passing through matter.
A better analogy would be a very fine sharp needle flying at high speed. They are difficult to detect without a reliable radiation detector and difficult discriminate from other forms of radiation other then there penetrative ability.
Regards
Robert
A better analogy would be a very fine sharp needle flying at high speed. They are difficult to detect without a reliable radiation detector and difficult discriminate from other forms of radiation other then there penetrative ability.
Regards
Robert
- Doug Coulter
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Re: Interesting DIY cosmic tube
Well, maybe cosmics aren't loud in your part of the world, but here they sure are, I get volt type signals out of the design mentioned above (about 1 ua currents). That's actual repeatable measurements by someone who knows how to make them, not conjecture.
But of course, my cosmic rays, like all others, aren't just muons, those are occasional secondary particles from a shower, the space ones are mostly protons until they hit something.
At ground level, there are every particle in the book in some showers -- positrons, all kinds of fun stuff, but they aren't the norm. Depends on what the incoming proton hit and other factors.
This is all well covered in the older physics books. People have even used 6" brass pipes with a wire in them at atmosphere or less, plain air, down to argon at about 70 torr for this, with a one tube (no transistors then) amp to get very large output pulses. They did this because that's an easy way to make the tube large enough to see more of them.
But of course, my cosmic rays, like all others, aren't just muons, those are occasional secondary particles from a shower, the space ones are mostly protons until they hit something.
At ground level, there are every particle in the book in some showers -- positrons, all kinds of fun stuff, but they aren't the norm. Depends on what the incoming proton hit and other factors.
This is all well covered in the older physics books. People have even used 6" brass pipes with a wire in them at atmosphere or less, plain air, down to argon at about 70 torr for this, with a one tube (no transistors then) amp to get very large output pulses. They did this because that's an easy way to make the tube large enough to see more of them.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!