Attenuation of rays and determination of Mass attenuation

coefficient
Manoj Kumar (13MS099)
Amod prakash (13MS057),
shashank Jha(13MS024))
February 9, 2016

0.1

Theory

The mechanism of interaction of particles with matter depends on the nature of the particles(especially on
their mass and electric charge). In case of charged particles such as electrons, protons, alpha particles is
electromagnetic in nature. alpha particles are high energy photons . photons donot have electric charge
therefore they donot participate in coulomb interaction. Alpha particle interaction cross-section is much
smaller than interaction cross-section of charged particles. alpha particles have zero rest mass so there
velocity is equal to the velocity of light. So alpha particles can only be scattered or absorbed.
when an aplha particle collides with an electron, the energy of the photon by scattering, this is called compton
scattering. photoelectric effect is a type of interaction of a photon with an atom absorbs all energy of the
photons and an atomic electron is removed.
The intensity of the incident radiation (I) depends exponentially on the thickness x,
I(x) = I0 ex
where is the attenuation coefficient.

0.2

GM characteristic curve

The GM characteristic curve is obtained for Na source. The Geiger-Muller Counter is an instrument used for
measuring ionizing radiations. It detects ionizing radiations such as particles , particles and rays using
the ionization produced in a Geiger-Muller tube. A Geiger-Muller counter consists of a Geiger-Muller tube,
the sensing element which detects the radiation, and the processing electronics which displays the result.
The Geiger-Muller tube is filled with an inert gas such as Helium, neon, or argon at low pressure and a high
voltage is applied. When a particle or photon of incident radiation enters the tube it ionizes the gas filled
in the GM counter by removal of electron through collision. At low voltage, these ionised gas molecules
quickly recombines, so a very less amount of ionised molecules are able to reach the detector producing a
very counts. At sufficiently high voltage when these incident radiation knocks out the electron from the gas
molecules,the electrons collides with other molecules to remove more and more electrons due to avalanche
effect which increases the counts detected at the detector. further increase in applied voltage gives sufficient
amount kinetic energy to the ionised molecules to reach detector. The Geiger-Muller counter in operated in
this region and hence this region is called Geiger-Muller region. Any further increase in applied voltage leads
to breakdown of gas molecules.

Figure 1: Table for voltage Vs no of counts

Figure 2: characteristic curve of GM counter

Figure 3: Table for countrate and thickness

0.3

Attenuation of rays

The attenuation of gamma ray using the aluminium sheet is given by the formula,

I(x) = I0 ex

Figure 4: ln(countrate) vs thickness

0.4

Calculation

From the graph 2 we have = 0.014mm1

Al = 2.7gm/cm3
we have mass attenuation coefficient
= 0.005mm2 mg 1
half value thickness t = 0.693/t = 49.5mm

0.5

Result

The attenuation coefficent of Al = 0.014mm1

The mass attenuation coefficent = 0.005mm2 mg 1
The half value thickness t is 49.5 mm