English Posts

The corpuscular nature of the light can be detected by means of the photon counting technique, realized with a photomultiplier tube. The “photon counting” technique has already been described in the post Light as a Particle, in which we used a special photon counter and a pulsed light source. In this …

In this post we propose the construction of a cosmic rays Cherenkov detector based on a radiator made of a transparent acrylic plastic block. In this site we have already described a water Cherenkov detector, in which the radiating material was formed by the water contained in a dewar vessel. For the …

There are some electronic tubes that contain small quantities of radioactive materials to enhance the internal ionization processes. Such tubes have been used in the 20th century mostly in radar technology. Some of these tubes contain small quantities of Cesium-137, Cobalt-60, Radium-226, Krypton-85. The radioactive elements have been added to increase …

Doppler Effect The microwave transceiver may be used for measuring the moving speed of an object by using the Doppler effect. The sensor emits the radiation, the radiation reaches an object. The object reflects part of the signal. If the object is stationary, the reflect signal has the same frequency. But …

In this post we describe the measures taken with a Webcam used as “Particle Detector” using the application “Theremino Particle Detector”. Measurements have been made by placing the source close to the Webcam, the figure below shows the typical setup used. The following common sources have been used : Thoriated gas …

Introduction The purpose of this document is to describe the use of a commercial webcam as a particle detector. We will show that, from an ordinary webcam, one can make a “low cost” detector can detect beta particles, gamma radiation and cosmic rays. The device can be used to make …

In the picture you see the trace of a cone of Cherenkov light produced in the Japanese experiment Kamiokande, based on 50000t of water kept “observed” by 11000 photomultiplier tubes. The interaction of a neutrino with electrons or nuclei of water can produce a charged particle that moves faster than …

Most radiation detectors require pulse (or signal) processing electronics so that energy or time information involved with radiation interactions can be properly extracted. The objective of this post is to describe some solutions for the PMT / SiPM pulse processing in radiation detection.

In this post we describe a sensor for gamma rays based on a scintillator crystal with a well for housing the sample to be measured. This type of sensor allows to perform measurements with 4π geometry on small samples. With this type of sensor very high count sensitivity is achieved.

In this post we propose the construction of a fluorometer for measuring the concentration of DNA in a biological sample . The instrument is of quite simple construction and therefore can definitely become part of a biological DIY laboratory.