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2. THEORY Water
activated sodium iodide crystal of cylindrical dimensions, dwell time of 10sec. We expect to see the characteris-
5 cm diameter and 5 cm long. When a gamma ray inter- tic radioactive decay exponential and use a fitted curve
acts with the crystal a burst of light is produced and con- to obtain a value for the half life of 28 Al.
verted into a voltage. It is only converted into a voltage if After obtaining a value of our half life we then con-
its picked up by the attached photomultiplier tube. This trolled the length of time that the cylinders had for ac-
signal is then amplified and fed through an analogue to tivation. We then measured the counts per 10 second
digital converter which is analysed using a Multi-Channel interval, as we did above in MCS mode, per activation
Analyser (MCA) to order the data into a pulse height time. This allowed us to plot the activity of the alu-
spectrum. The amplified analogue signals are also sent minium cylinder as a function of activation time.
to a timing single-channel analyser (TSCA). The output
logic pulse from the TSCA is altered using a gate and
delay generator (GDG). This signal is used to gate the 4. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
MCA and trigger the oscilloscope, refer to figure 1, [5].
For this experiment the radiative source (to create After calibration and windowing the pulse height spec-
the 28 Al through neutron activation) was a Americium- trum of 28 Al can be seen in figure 2. We can see that win-
Beryllium (AmBe) neutron source. The source was kept dowing a spectrum allows us to focus of specific gamma-
in a water bath for safety. rays of a desired energy. Note that despite the window
The electronics and detector-computer set-up was cal- there is an unexpected count in the low energy range.
ibrated using 137 Cs and 60 Co calibration sources. Our
voltage supply was set to 1.19kV . We used the 60 Co cal-
ibration source because 60 Co is known to have an energy
peak at 1.77M eV , [3]. This peak is close to the peak we
were expecting to see for the 28 Al pulse height spectrum.
This allowed us to ensure our settings for the electron-
ics would be correct for the 28 Al decay. Refer to table
I for the settings after calibration. After the calibration
was complete a pulse height spectrum of 28 Al was taken.
After being left in the water bath for a minimum of 30
minutes the aluminium cylinder was then dried. The de-
tector with the photo-multiplier tube attached to it was
then placed in the center of the Al cylinders. A pulse
height spectrum was recorded.
TABLE II: Table showing the results of the exponential curve fit where we fitted N (t) = KC0 et + KB0 . K representing
factors which may affect count rate, such as detector efficiency. C0 is the initial activity of the source at the time of the first
measurement and B0 is the background count rate. is the decay constant which is used to calculate t1/2 (the half-life).
Data Set C0 K U(C0 K) B0 K U(B0 K) U() t1/2 mins U(t1/2 ) mins /dof Activation Time (min)
1 450.7 7.3 43.06 0.89 0.005017 0.000098 2.303 0.045 0.85 -
2 558.2 9.0 31.6 1.8 0.00508 0.00012 2.276 0.053 1.06 75
3 181.8 5.0 12.01 0.69 0.00522 0.00018 2.212 0.076 0.98 -
4 494.5 8.0 22.09 0.97 0.005107 0.000099 2.262 0.044 1.00 -
5 527.6 9.6 60.71 0.87 0.00511 0.00010 2.257 0.046 1.20 -
6 559.5 9.8 72.2 1.6 0.00514 0.00012 2.245 0.052 1.14 -
7 449.9 8.2 27.8 3.8 0.00532 0.00021 2.172 0.086 1.06 5
8 509.8 8.2 21.8 4.0 0.00524 0.00019 2.205 0.079 0.98 15
9 107.8 3.8 02.5 4.4 0.00444 0.00052 2.60 0.30 0.74 2.5
10 171.4 4.8 08.5 2.7 0.00538 0.00036 2.15 0.14 0.93 7.5
11 538.4 7.5 06.4 4.0 0.00497 0.00016 2.323 0.076 0.86 10
12 204.9 4.6 00.6 2.9 0.00462 0.00026 2.50 0.14 0.89 13
13 420.5 8.1 14.9 4.5 0.00505 0.00023 2.29 0.11 1.20 5
14 533.2 9.3 09.2 1.2 0.00519 0.00011 2.226 0.047 1.32 10
15 536.8 8.8 09.6 1.4 0.00501 0.00011 2.31 0.051 1.18 15
16 553.8 8.8 55.2 4.0 0.00517 0.00017 2.236 0.076 0.96 30
U ()
U (t1/2 = ln(2)/
q
U (N ) = u(C0 Ket )2 + u(B0 K)2
p
where u(C0 Ket ) = C0 Ket (u(C0 K)/C0 K)2 + u()2
These N (tb ) were then plotted against activation
time to give us figure 5. Using the same python model,
scipy.optimize.curve fit, we fitted the data to the
FIG. 4: The top figure shows the data that was taken in expected model of R(1 eta ), where R is the only fit
MCS mode linearized with the calculated uncertainties. The parameter and is our average from our exponential
best fit line, calculated using SCIPY in python, resulted in fits.
C = 6.3240.017 and M = 0.0042710.000074. From these
best fitted parameters we get that t1/2 = 2.705 0.047mins Unfortunately this is clearly a terrible fit and an inac-
and that our fit has a /dof value of 1.54 which indicates curate R. However to try and get an estimate for the neu-
that the fit doesnt describe the data very accurately. tron flux we note the relation which defines R. R = Np
The bottom figure shows the residuals which we can see sta- where Np = C0 past saturation, = (0.231 0.003)b and
tistically fluctuate around zero indicating that our model fit is the neutron flux. Using Np = 1.11481 1026 2.22
is sufficient in form. 1024 atoms we get = (50 108)neutrons/cm3 .
5
5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS as was recommended. Our plot for the activity of the
sample as a function of activation time, figure 5, showed
Our exponential fit to the plain data provided a much that the single parameter R was not able to account for
more accurate fit and half life estimate of t1/2 = (2.285 our data given our average ln(2)/ = 2.2855 0.027.
0.027)minutes. This value is only slightly off of the ac- This resulted in massive uncertainty in our R value. So
tual value of 2.245minutes, [3]. Our data gave some much so that we are unable to comment on the neu-
very strange results for the activity as a function of ac- tron flux as the uncertainty is greater than the value,
tivation time. I believe this is due to the fact that we = (50 108)neutrons/cm3 . Had we had more time we
did not open the window when taking data sets 7-16 intended to retake data sets 7-16 with an open window.
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