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Experimental
- You have been given 3 sealed sources, 60Co, 137Cs & 152Eu, plus a set of 9 lead absorbers and 9 aluminium absorbers of different thicknesses
- Using tweezers place one of the sources in the shelf of the lead castle Geiger counter and shut the door
- Using the attached scaler timer determine the count over 100 sec
- Place one of the lead absorbers above the source in the Geiger counter and recount
- Repeat using each different thickness of lead absorber
- Measure the background with the medium thickness lead absorber in place but without the source
- Remove the lead absorber and measure the background again with the castle empty
- Correct the results for the background and plot a graph showing log counts per minute against absorber thickness
- From the graph determine the value of x½
- Using the graph provided*, determine the approximate value for the photon energy
- Repeat the experiment using the other 2 sources
- Repeat the whole experiment using the set of 9 aluminium absorbers
References
- R.T. Overman and H.M. Clark, Radioisotope techniques, McGraw-Hill 1960.