Gamma Ray Penetration Of Lead

The amount of radiation that occurs to the matter depends on two things: what radiation is used.

what material is used for absorption.

There are three types of radiation; they are Alpha, Beta and Gamma. Gamma radiation has two types of radiation, nuclear which is dangerous and electromagnetic which is not dangerous.

Gamma rays are the opposite of alpha particles in a way. They penetrate a long way into materials without being stopped. This means they are weakly ionising because they bend to pass through rather than colliding with atoms. Eventually they hit something and do damage. The only thing that block Gamma rays is thick lead and concrete. In the experiment I will be using lead.

In 1896 Henri Becquerel was investigating materials, which glow when placed in an x-ray beam. Curious to find out if strong sunlight caused uranium salt to glow. It was clear that uranium salts emit penetrating radiation, which can blacken photographic film. More interested in x-rays, Becquerel passed the challenge of further investigations on to one of his students, Marie Curie.

Within a few years, Marie Curie discovered other elements such as

. . .

View the whole essay, without interruption

Gamma radiation was shown to be electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of the order of 10 m or less. Even though these results are not spot on you have to allow for minor problems that could affect the results.

From these results I have found you can see, that if you double the thickness of lead the penetration of the gamma ray decreases by half.

All isotopes, which are taken into the body, must always be gamma sources, so that the radiation passes out of the body and they must also have a short half-life of just a few hours, so that the radioactivity inside the patient quickly disappears.

Apparatus needed: Geiger Muller counter

Stopwatch

Different thickness of lead

Radium 226

Metre rule

Vernier callipers

The Experiment

I first made sure that all the apparatus was there. fallout from nuclear explosions or dumped nuclear waste.

Results:

Readings:

Thickness of lead (mm) 1 2 3 Average

Unprotected 7837 7813 7829 7826

3. From this, my assumptions where correct. This shows something obviously went wrong.

· Radiation due to human activity, i.

The nature of radioactive radiation.

Approximate Word count = 1612
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Simply subscribe to view this paper, and 100,000 others.