Experiment 20.

Beta Decay
Updated MD July 6, 2011
1 Objectives
The known energies of internal conversion
1
electrons of the
207
Bi nuclei will be used to cali-
brate the energy spectrum generated by data acquisition system. A Kurie plot of the beta energy
spectrum of
147
Pm will be made. This allows one to obtain a maximum energy of the electrons
and also a very rough experimental upper limit for the mass of the electron antineutrino. An
electron spectrometer is used to measure the momentum-energy relationship of the electrons,
as a means of conrming the laws of special relativity.
2 Introduction
2.1 Beta decay
Radioactivity can be viewed as a particular type of nuclear reaction where the product par-
ticle(s) are not emitted promptly. The average time before emission could be longer than
1
Internal electron conversion is explained in detail in the chapter 7
202 SENIOR PHYSICS LABORATORY
10
20
years, but could be as short as 10
15
s. (Half-life of double-beta decay in
82
Se is esti-
mated to be 1.3 10
20
years, the universe is about 13.7 10
9
years old). In beta decay one
usually has times of milliseconds or longer.
At the beginning of the 20th century the phenomenon of radioactive decay was investigated in
great detail and classied into three categories: alpha, beta and gamma. In the course of this
work it was discovered that alpha and gamma were both two body decays; an alpha particle
(or gamma photon) and a recoil nucleus is produced. By using the conservation of energy and
momentum it can easily be shown that the sharing of the disintegration energy between the
alpha particle (or gamma photon) and the recoil nucleus is unique. Of course, because of the
latters mass, most of the energy goes into the alpha (or gamma) and a tiny fraction goes into
the recoil nucleus.
The situation with beta decay is quite different in that the process is a three body decay
A
Z
X
N

A
Z+1
Y
N1
+e

+
e
(beta minus)
A
Z
X
N

A
Z1
Y
N+1
+e
+
+
e
(beta plus)
2
As well as the beta particle (e

or e
+
), there must be the product nucleus of course. However
there is a mysterious third particle: the electron neutrino or electron antineutrino (depending
on whether it is a positron or electron decay). The neutrino is a neutral particle with very small
or zero rest mass. It is a fermion like the electron (it has a spin of 1/2) and belongs with the
electron to the lepton family of particles, see below.
_
e

_
The three different columns denote particles of different avours. In the second and third
columns we have the muon and its neutrino and the tau particle and its neutrino. All the
neutrinos (in the second row) are uncharged and their counterparts in the top row are charged
negatively. For each of these six particles there is an antiparticle with opposite charge; the
antiparticles to the neutrinos have zero charge.
3
The kinematics of three body decay means that for a given beta decaying nucleus, the sharing
of the disintegration energy between the three particles varies from decay to decay. It is to be
understood that the lions share of this energy goes to the two light particles and not to the
heavy recoil nucleus. The conservation of momentum guarantees this. The remaining energy
is shared between the electron and neutrino; most of the time one has roughly equal sharing but
in a small number of decays the electron will have most of the energy. Likewise one has a small
number of cases where the neutrino takes most of the energy. This results in a distribution of
electron energies as shown in Fig. 20-1.
2
Similar process to beta plus decay is electron capture
A
Z
XN + e

A
Z1
YN+1 + e which is explained in
chapter 7.
3
The antineutrinos observed so far all have right-handed helicity (i.e. only one of the two possible spin states
has ever been seen), while the neutrinos are left-handed. Because antineutrinos and neutrinos are neutral particles
it is possible that they are actually the same particle (Majorana particle).
BETA DECAY 203
Fig. 20-1 Typical energy distribution of electrons in beta decay.
2.2 Energy, mass, and momentum in classical and relativistic theories
Electrons used in this experiment are very fast moving particles. It is a great opportunity for
us to investigate some of the aspects of special relativity versus classical physics. Particulary
we will use a electrons movement in a perpendicular magnetic eld to nd its momentum and
energy dependance. Let us rst recall some equations from both theories which we will use in
this experiment.
4
Relationship between momentum and energy of the particle:
E
k
=
p
2
2m
(Newtons physics)
(E
k
+E
0
)
2
= (pc)
2
+E
2
0
(Einsteins physics)
where: E
k
is kinetic energy of the particle, p is its momentum, m is its mass, E
0
= mc
2
is its
rest mass energy. Symbol c denotes the speed of light in vacuum.
Momentum of a charged particle moving perpendicularly in uniform magnetic eld in both
theories is expressed by the equation:
p = qrB
where: q is charge of the particle, r is radius of a circular path of the particle, and B is strength
(induction) of the magnetic eld.
Question 1: Using special relativity calculate momentum, total energy, kinetic energy, and
speed of electron moving perpendicularly in uniform magnetic eld which magnetic ux den-
sity is 0.1 Tif radius of the circular path is 0.1 m. Rest mass energy of electron is 0.510998910(13) MeV.
Express results in both, SI and natural (using e and c) units.
C 1

4
See appendix 8 for more in detail explanation and derivation of equations listed below, as well as natural and
SI units used in high energy physics.
204 SENIOR PHYSICS LABORATORY
3 Apparatus
The electrons in this experiment are detected using a surface barrier semiconductor detector
similar to the one used in the Alpha Particles experiment except that the depletion layer
is about ve times thicker: namely 500 m instead of 100 m. The amplied pulses from this
detector are processed by a multichannel analyser UCS30, which is connected to a computer. A
beta particle spectrometer is used later on in the experiment. In the spectrometer the betas pass
perpendicular to the magnetic eld of an electromagnet. Particles of a chosen momentum range
are counted and their energy can be measured. This allows one to compare the electrons energy
with its momentum, enabling the electrons mass to be measured and the effects of the special
theory of relativity to be experienced. The surface barrier detector is mounted in one corner
of the aluminium vacuum box shown in Fig. 20-2. Opposite the detector is the vacuum sealed
radioactive source holder. There are two radioactive sources marked: 207Bi and 147Pm
which can be mounted in this holder. If you are using the
90
Sr source, this holders entry
should be plugged with the plug marked EMPTY. The vacuum chamber should be left in
this condition when measurements are not being taken so as to prolong the life of the detector
which is susceptible to damage by radiation. The
90
Sr source is mounted in another vacuum
sealed source holder and should remain there all the time. It does not interfere with your
measurement of the
207
Bi and
147
Pm spectra if the magnetic eld is turned off.
To change the radioactive source one should stop the vacuum pump and then open the air inlet
valve to allow air to ll the vacuum chamber. Make sure rst that the both power supplies are
turned off. The radioactive sources being used in this experiment are very week. However, to
prevent any unnecessary irradiation, the unused sources should be kept in their slots in the lead
block.
A vacuum has to be established in the box since the electrons lose energy by ionisation in any
medium they travel through. At atmospheric pressure, a few cm of air (say 5 mg/cm
2
) will
degrade the energy of electrons by at least 10 keV and make energy measurements inaccurate.
The detector itself also requires a vacuum. It can be damaged if its 100 V bias voltage is applied
before a reasonable vacuum is established. An interlock cuts off the bias voltage if the pressure
in the aluminium box is greater than 0.6 torr.
Question 2: Why is semiconductor detector used to detect alpha particles of kinetic energy
5 MeV not especially suitable for detecting 1 MeV beta particles?
C 2

4 Calibration
1. Insert the
207
Bi source into the vacuum chamber, the source which will be used for
calibrating the multichannel analyser.
2. Make sure rst that the bias voltage is off, and that the air inlet valve on the vacuum
system is closed.
3. Start the vacuum pump.
4. Once the pressure is in the green region of the vacuum gauge, turn on the bias voltage
and adjust it to 100 V.
BETA DECAY 205
Fig. 20-2 Construction of the vacuum chamber in the beta particle experiment.
5. Switch on the multichannel analyser.
6. Run the UCS 30 application and choose Mode PHA(AmpIn) menu. Click on
Settings Amp/HV/ADC to open Amp/HV/ADC Settings dialog box. Make
sure that:
High Volotage is Off
Amp In Polarity is set positive (pulse polarity positive)
Coarse Gain is 16
Fine Gain is 1
Conversion Gain is 2048 (number of channels 2048)
LLD is 2 (lower level discriminator)
ULD is 102.3 (upper level discriminator)
PeakTime is 4 micro sec (pulse width 4s)
7. Acquire data for 30 minutes. You should see peaks near channels 725, 838, 1474
and 1584 corresponding respectively to electrons of energies 482 keV, 555 keV, 976 keV
and 1049 keV. All those peaks appear on the falling edge of the main peak which has a
maximum around channel 260. This background is due to the small thickness of our
detector. A high energy electron can go through the detector and deposit just a portion of
its energy in the depletion layer.
5
However, some of the high energy electrons can deposit
all their kinetic energy even in a thin depletion layer.
6
Those electrons will contribute to
5
For electrons of energy 1 MeV, the detector should have the depletion layer 2 mm thick to allow almost all
electrons to deposit their whole energy inside the detector.
6
Because of their small mass, electrons moving in matter scatters on electrons or nuclei and change not just
206 SENIOR PHYSICS LABORATORY
the peaks that we use for calibration. See Fig. 20-3.
Fig. 20-3 Spectrum of the
207
Bi source.
The count C(N) in a given channel N of the multichannel analyser is subject to statistical
uctuations with a standard deviation =
_
C(N). The ratio of to C(N) decreases
as counting progresses so that the spectrum becomes smoother looking.
8. Save the spectrum in Spectrum les (*.spu) format using File Save menu. This will
apply to all spectra taken in this experiment. You can open the saved spectrum later for
further analysis.
9. Set region of interest for each of the four mentioned above peaks. To do so click right
mouse button and choose ROI

s Set ROI from the popup menu. Next hover mouse

pointer over the peak with left mouse button pressed down. When you click over high-
lighted peak, then most of the peak information will be displayed at the bottom of the
window. The program calculates the peak parameters as
Centroid: - the average channel of the peak.
FWHM: - the peaks width at half of its height.
Gross: - the number of counts integrated over the whole peaks area.
Net: - the number of counts integrated over the peak with background counts sub-
tracted.
10. Write down the Centroid and FWHM parameters for each peak.
11. Use File Print . . . to make a hard copy print out of the spectrum.
The peaks in the spectrum are due to internal conversion electrons. Here the spectrum is
used as a means of calibrating the apparatus. That is you will need to obtain an equation
that converts channel number into energy. Since you know the energies of the peaks in
the spectrum then a linear plot between channel number and energy will give a straight
energy, but also the direction of their movement. Even a high energy electron can lose all its energy if it does not
escape from the detector before it stops.
BETA DECAY 207
line and its corresponding equation:
E
k
= aN +b (1)
where E
k
is the kinetic energy of the electron corresponding to the channel number N,
a and b are constants.
12. Using a computer application QtiPlot, make a table with column X containing chan-
nel number and column Y corresponding energy energy of the 4 peaks from the
207
Bi
spectrum. Plot a scatter graph of the energy as a function of the channel number and then
t a straight line. Now you have the data acquisition system calibrated.
C 3

5 Beta particle energy spectrum
1. Insert the
147
Pm source.
2. Acquire its spectrum for 30 min using the same gain settings as before. Save the spec-
trum.
3. Your spectrum does not look like that in Fig. 20-1 because only the highest energy tail
of the spectrum exceeds the value of the LLD (lower level discriminator). Fortunately,
just this part of the spectrum will be of our interest. Save the spectrum for later analysis.
Fig. 20-4 Energy level diagram for
147
Pm.
The spectrum is due to electrons - beta particles - being emitted from the nuclei of
147
Pm.
The spectrum looks quite different from the one from
207
Bi in that it extends from the lowest
energies (cut off in our experiment by LLD) up to some maximum energy E
max
. Beta decay is
frequently followed by gamma decay i.e. the product nucleus is created in an excited state. This
does occur in
147
Pm (see Fig. 20-4) but with extremely low probability. (This is one reason for
choosing to examine this source.). For
147
Pm, E
max
/c
2
is nearly equal to the mass difference
208 SENIOR PHYSICS LABORATORY
of
147
Pm and
147
Sm, the difference being the small recoil energy of
147
Sm. We are not able
to measure directly this recoil energy or the neutrinos energy; only the beta particles energy
can be measured. If it is close to E
max
then we know that the electron has been given most of
the available energy and the neutrino very little. It is understandable that this occurs rarely, the
rarity increasing as the beta energy approaches E
max
.
It would be good if we could make the upper energy end of the beta spectrum look like a
straight line intersecting the energy axis (abscissa) at E
max
. This could be done by changing
the plot so that it is not one showing C(N) against E but a special function K(p) (called the
Kurie
7
function) against p.
The theory is given in many text books (see the books listed under references). According to
the theory, the Kurie function is dened as;
K(p) =
P(p)
p
2
F(Z, p)
(2)
where P(p) is the probability of getting an electron momentum of p in small range of p and
F(Z, p) is the Fermi function. The latter allows for the Coulomb attraction of the nucleus for
the beta particle as it leaves the nucleus and depends, as expected, on the product nucleus
atomic number Z.
In the present experiment we are doing electron energy spectroscopy rather than momentum
spectroscopy. Accordingly we must use the energy form of the Kurie function (see [3], page
234)
K(E) =

P(E)
pEF(Z, p)
(3)
where E is the total energy of the electron (kinetic energy plus rest energy). P(E) can be
approximated by C(N). In
147
Pm the Fermi function F(Z, p) varies slowly in the region of
the end point E
max
so we will set it to a constant.
The electron momentum p and the total energy E, have to be calculated using the appropriate
relativistic relations, from the kinetic energy E
k
, with the latter found from the channel number
N using the calibration made in the last section (equation (1)).
The relation between E and p is
E
2
= (pc)
2
+E
2
0
(4)
and between E and the kinetic energy E
k
it is
E = E
k
+E
0
(5)
From equations (4) and (5) pc =
_
E
2
k
+ 2E
k
E
0
so the Kurie function can be expressed as
7
After Franz N. D. Kurie who rst use it to analyse beta decay spectra. This function can be derived from
Fermis model of beta decay. In case of so called allowed beta transition it should be a straight line.
BETA DECAY 209
K(E
k
)

_
C(N)
(E
k
+E
0
)
_
E
2
k
+ 2E
k
E
0
(6)
The rest energy of the electron is E
0
= 511 keV. We omitted the constant Fermis function
F(Z, p) and c for simplicity.
Now we are ready to make a Kurie plot of the
147
Pm spectrum.
4. Export the saved spectrum of
147
Pm as an ASCI data using the File Save as Tab
separated variable (*.tsv).
5. Open the QtiPlot application and use File Import ASCII . . . to load your data
into the table. Set Separator as \t\t (two TAB characters), set Ignore rst to 18 lines
(this can be different number if you selected some ROIs), and set Endline character as
LF(Unix).
6. Remove the data points below the LLD level and also some higher energy remainders
of the background (simply ranges of channels containing zero or very small number of
counts should be removed).
8
7. Add a new column to the worksheet and set its values to kinetic energy of electrons using
calibration equation (1). Use Table Set CoulmnAs X to change the columns
meaning.
8. Add a new column and set its values using equation (6).
9. Make a scatter plot of the new column (Kurie function values) against the energy. The
plot should be close to a linear function. In our case we make an approximation to the
Kurie function by assuming Fermi function to be constant. This condition is not fullled
for all data points, and just a small part of the data points can be approximated by a linear
function, although you should observe that your original spectrum has been straightened
up.
10. Select 30 data points close to the high energy end of the spectrum.
11. Make a linear t to your plot and nd the energy where it crosses the abscissa. This is
the E
max
for
147
Pm. Compare this value with the accepted value of 224 keV.
12. Estimate the error of the E
max
using the linear t parameters.
If the neutrino mass is non-zero, then the ideal Kurie spectrum should turn down to the axis as
is shown in Fig. 20-5.
The possibility of a non-zero neutrino mass has been intriguing physicists for many years now.
The development of theories of the fundamental particles of nature would be greatly aided if
it could be settled whether the three avours of neutrinos were massless or had nite masses.
If the latter were true then one would want to know the value of the masses. On June 5, 1998,
the Super-Kamiokande collaboration located in Japan announced the discovery of evidence for
neutrino mass at the Neutrino 98 conference, held in Takayama, Japan. For a long time a
massless neutrino was a widely held but debated idea.
Currently there is an international collaboration planning a new experiment to investigate the
8
Ideally the background spectrum should be acquired and subtracted from the spectrum of
147
Pm, but this
method requires much longer times for collecting both spectra.
2010 SENIOR PHYSICS LABORATORY
Fig. 20-5 Expanded Kurie plot of the tritium spectrum in the region near the end point. The curves are
the theoretical plots expected for the indicated rest mass (in keV) of the neurtino.
end point of the tritium -decay spectrum called KATRIN. The KATRIN experiment is de-
signed to measure the rest mass of the electron neutrino directly with a sensitivity of 0.2 eV/c
2
.
Question 3: How large would the electron antineutrino rest mass need to be for this turn down
to be observable with our experimental resolution and errors?
C 4

6 Comparison of the electrons momentum and energy
Lets assume that we know the momentum p and kinetic energy E
k
of the particle. Momentum
can be calculated from trajectory of a particle moving in the magnetic eld and kinetic energy
can be measured by the detector. The question is: What is the rest mass (or rest mass energy)
of the particle?
The answers from classical and relativistic theories give a very different results. From equations
(10) and (11) we can nd that in classical case:
mc
2
=
(pc)
2
2E
k
(7)
and from equations (14) and (19) we can obtain the relativistic answer:
mc
2
=
(pc)
2
2E
k

E
k
2
(8)
Question 4: Please derive above equations as an exercise.
In this section a magnetic spectrometer is used to select electrons of known momentum and
then measure their energy against the calibration which has been made. The electrons used are
those from the
90
Sr source which is mounted in the aluminium box as shown in Fig. 20-2.
The decay scheme of
90
Sr is shown in Fig. 20-6. Electrons are produced up to 2.28 MeV.
1. Insert the EMPTY plug in the radioactive source holder.
BETA DECAY 2011
Fig. 20-6 Energy level diagram for
90
Sr.
2. Insert the magnetic eld probe as far as it will go into the hole provided for it near the
preamplier.
3. Later on, when the magnet current is on, you will have to rotate the probe so that the
meter reads a positive maximum value. This will orientate the probe correctly. The
direction of

B is vertical and pointing up. You can use

F = q

B (9)
to nd the sign of the charge on the electrons.
4. Do this, and record the result!
5. Change the magnet current to read B = 200 G
9
on the magnetometer. Acquire the
spectrum until the peak is well formed ( 250 counts in the peak maximum is enough).
Select the peak and record its average channel number and width by means of Centroid
and FWHM values. Save the spectrum.
6. Repeat the above measurement for magnetic eld increasing in 100 G intervals up to
maximumB = 1200 G. When magnetic eld increases above 0.08 T (800 G) you can no-
tice an additional peak at channel 260. Further increase of the magnetic eld increases
the height of this additional peak and decreases the height of the main peak. Note that
the position of this rst articial peak almost does not change (slightly shifted towards
lower channel by increased height) while the real peak is shifted to the higher channel
when magnetic eld increases. This can be explained by the fact that most high energy
9
1 gauss (symbol 1 G or 1 Gs) is an old unit of magnetic eld strength. 1 G = 10
4
T (tesla is recommended SI
unit). Magnetometer used in this experiment reads in gauss.
2012 SENIOR PHYSICS LABORATORY
electrons will go straight through the depletion layer and deposit only a small portion of
their energy.
7. Switch off the magnetometer to save its battery.
8. Open Qtiplot and ll a table with recorded magnetic eld B, peak position and FWHM
parameter. Add new columns when needed.
9. Use the formula pc = qrBc to obtain an estimate for pc, where: p is the momentum of
the particle, c =299792458 m/s is speed of light, q is the charge of electron (use q = 1e),
r =0.042 m is the radius of electrons path, and B is the magnetic eld in tesla.
10. Use calibration equation to calculate energy of the peaks in a new column. Set this
column as X.
11. Add another new column with values of (pc)
2
/(2E
k
).
12. Add a new column with energy error approximated from FWMH. Set this column as X
error.
13. Add a new column and set its value to an approximated error of (pc)
2
/(2E
k
) using
assumption that accuracy of measured B is 1%, the error of r is 1 mm and the error of E
from the previous column. Set this column as Y error.
14. Select last 4 columns and make a scatter plot of (pc)
2
/(2E
k
) against E
k
. The slope
should be zero if Newton was right and 0.5 if Einstein was right (why?). In both cases
the intercept should equal to the rest mass energy of an electron (511 keV).
15. Fit linear function to the data to obtain the slope and the intercept.
16. Add to this plot two functions predicted by Newtons and Einsteins theories. Comment
on results.
Question 5: Calculate the speed of an electron which you detected at B = 1200 G in terms of
the speed of light c.
C 5

7 Internal electron conversion (Supplementary investigation)
The
207
Bi spectrum which has been used for calibration purposes enables us to examine some
of the physics of the internal electron conversion process since the four lines in the spectrum
are due to this process.
Fig. 20-7 shows the decay scheme of
207
Bi. It decays mostly by the process of orbital electron
capture. This decreases the atomic number Z one unit whilst leaving the mass number A
unchanged. (So does positron emission (
+
emission) but an extra 2mc
2
of energy is needed
to create the positron). Orbital electron capture (called EC in the nuclear data tables), is possible
because the orbital electrons wave functions are non zero in the nucleus. It cannot happen in a
nucleus deprived of its orbital electrons and is of course impossible unless the process releases
energy. As expected, a neutrino is released in the process
e

+
207
83
Bi
207
82
Pb+
e
The
207
Pb is left after this process in various excited states which can de-excite by gamma ray
cascades. We are particularly concerned with the 1064 keV and 570 keV gammas. In many
cases the nucleus will give the transition energy, not to a gamma ray but to an orbital electron,
BETA DECAY 2013
Fig. 20-7 Branching ratios for the decay
207
Bi.
a process known as internal electron conversion. This again is only possible from a nucleus
clothed with at least some orbital electrons. The electrons must obey the conservation of
energy
E
k
= h E
B
where E
k
is the kinetic energy measured outside the atom, h is the quantum energy of the
had there been a gamma transition and E
B
is the binding energy of the electron emitted.
One would expect K-shell electron conversion to be more likely (providing it is energetically
possible) because the wave function for electron in s-state (n = 1) has an antinode in the
nucleus. The s-state electrons further out in the atom have similar wave functions except for
the effects of electron screening which tends to spread the wave out and cut down its amplitude
at the nucleus. For heavy atoms, only two out of the eight L-shell electrons are in s-states so
we expect L-shell conversion to be no more probable than K-shell conversion.
The surface barrier detector used in this experiment has insufcient resolution to distinguish L-
shell lines from M-shell etc. lines further out in the atom. This is why we see for each transition,
only two peaks (the composite nature of a second peak can be observed if enough pulses are
collected), the lower energy one due to K-shell electrons and the other due to (L+M+N+...)-
shell electrons. The binding energy of K-shell electrons of the product atom Pb is 88.0 keV and
the weighted mean of the L-shell electron binding energy is 14.3 keV.
1. Check that the separation of the two low energy peaks and two high energy peaks, which
you use for calibration, is equal to the difference of these two binding energies.
2. For each of those peaks set ROI and write down the Net parameter. Calculate the
ratio of this parameter for each pair of the peaks corresponding to 570 keV and 1064 keV
energies.
3. Compare your results with the data listed in the Table of Isotopes for
207
Bi. This ratio
would be denoted by the symbol K/L+M+N+....
Very likely your results are quite different from those listed in the book. The main reason for
this is that we did not take into account that efciency to detect a full energy of an electron
by our detector is changing rapidly at higher energies. Fortunately we can compensate for
2014 SENIOR PHYSICS LABORATORY
this by calculating efciency of the detector as function of electrons energy using our spectra
obtained from the beta spectrometer earlier. It is in itself interesting to know how efciency
10
of the detector changes with energy of the detected electrons.
4. Recall the spectrum which you obtained at B = 200 G in UCS30.
5. Set ROI on the main peak and read the Net parameter.
6. Set ROI to cover all channels and read the Gross parameter.
7. Calculate the efciency (ratio of Net and Gross parameters) and write it down.
8. Repeat above steps for each spectrum up to B = 1200 G.
9. In Qtiplot make a table with columns containing energy of the peak as X and corre-
sponding efciency of the detector as Y. Make a scatter plot of this data.
10. Use interpolation to nd detector efciency at
207
Bi characteristic energies (you can do
it by hand or use Qtiplot Analysis Interpolation. . . menu).
11. Apply correction to the previously calculated values of K/L+M+N+... by multiplying
it by ratio of the corresponding efciencies.
The shutting down procedure is most important.
1. Turn off the power supplies.
2. Turn off the vacuum pump.
3. Open the air inlet valve (knurled knob) so that the pumps oil is not sucked up into the
vacuum region.
4. Ensure that the EMPTY plug is inserted into the exchangeable source holder.
5. Turn off the power at the power point.
6. Check if the magnetometer is turned off.
C 6

8 Appendix
8.0.1 Classical (Newtons) theory
Denition of energy and momentum:
E = E
k
=
mv
2
2
(10)

p = m

v (11)
where E is a total energy, E
k
is a kinetic energy, and

p denotes momentum of the body with

mass m moving with a speed

v .
10
In this case efciency is dened as ratio of number of electrons detected in main peak (net area) to the total
number of detected electrons. All counted pulses are caused by electrons with the same energy!
BETA DECAY 2015
If this body has a charge q and is moving perpendicularly to magnetic eld

B, then its tra-

jectory will be circular with radius

r (

r vector is directed towards the centre of the circle).

By comparing acceleration from circular movement and electromagnetic force we can write
equation:

F = q

B =
d

p
dt
=
d(m

v )
dt
= m
d(

v )
dt
= m
v
2
r

r
r
(12)
by taking only absolute values (a length) of all vectors (we know what directions are) in the
above equation (12), we will have:
qvB = m
v
2
r
mv = qrB p = qrB (13)
8.0.2 Relativistic (Einsteins) theory
According to the special relativity theory, energy and momentum can be expressed as follows:
E = E
k
+mc
2
= mc
2
(14)

p = m

v (15)
where = 1/
_
1 (v/c)
2
and c denotes the speed of light in vacuum.
11
Energy and momentum are closely related
12
because both contain the factor m:
E = mc
2
=
pc
2
v
(16)
The particle speed in terms of energy and momentum is
v
c
=
pc
E
(17)
Thus, the energy may be written
E = mc
2
=
mc
2
_
1
(pc)
2
E
2
(18)
Solving for E, we arrive at the expression relating the total energy (E), momentum (p), and
mass (m) of particle:
E
2
= (pc)
2
+ (mc
2
)
2
(19)
Very often mc
2
is called rest mass energy and denoted by E
0
. Using this convention we can
write:
pc =
_
E
2
E
2
0
(20)
In nuclear and elementary particle physics we often use electronvolts
13
(symbol eV) as unit
of energy. Equation (19) invites a convenient unit for momentum of a particle, electronvolt
divided by the speed of light (symbol eV/c). Also for mass of particle we can use electronvolt
11
By denition of the meter, the speed of light is exactly c = 2.99792458 10
8
m/s.
12
Best it is represented as invariant magnitude of the energy-momentum 4-vector in 4D Minkowski space.
13
The electronvolt (symbol eV) is the kinetic energy acquired by an electron in passing through a potential
difference of 1 V in vacuum. 1 eV=1.602 176 487(40)10
19
J.
2016 SENIOR PHYSICS LABORATORY
divided by squared speed of light (symbol eV/c
2
). By dening those units we can save the
trouble of dividing by c or c
2
when calculating momentum or mass from the energy equation
(19). Also using value of elementary charge e expressed in coulombs can be avoided in most
cases.
14
Now using similar reasoning as in classical physics we will derive relativistic equation for
movement of charged particle in uniform, perpendicular magnetic eld:
15

F = q

B =
d

p
dt
=
d(m

v )
dt
= m
d(

v )
dt
= m
v
2
r

r
r
(21)
by taking only absolute values of all vectors in the above equation (21), we will have:
qvB = m
v
2
r
mv = qrB p = qrB (22)
This equation is identical to the classical one!
References
[1] G.F. Knoll. Radiation Detection and Measurement.
[2] William E. Burcham. Nuclear Physics an Introduction.
[3] Robert Howard. Nuclear Physics. (describes both forms of the Kurie function)
[4] Lederer et al. Table of Isotopes.
14
Those units formally do not belong to international system of units (SI), but are accepted for use especially in
high energy or elementary particle physics.
15
Here we are using the fact that the electromagnetic force

F is perpendicular to the velocity

v of the particle
and the factor is constant in time.