Gamma Spectrometry Forum

Hi guys, my cables finally arrived, so I was able to do some basic testing. As I said, my current setup uses two separate lines for HV (BNC-BNC) and signal (Gx16-Gx16). During the testing, I mainly focused on the capacitance, because if the capacitance is too high, it can "flatten" your pu...

Interesting scintillators, Lukas! Although I'm mostly into GS (and my knowledge about neutron counting is rather limited), I think that "BoTri" in this case stands for boron-triazole, but you are right, from what I've read, it's often mixed together with other boron containing compounds (l...

As always, that probably depends on your setup. For example, my detector uses two separate lines (HV and signal) to connect the probe with the spectrometer (which contains an external sound card and also all the required electronics). For connecting it to a PC, I have a decently shielded USB cable. ...

First of all, welcome to the world of gamma spectroscopy, Marcel! It might seem counter-intuitive, but it's true that people with crystals like 1.5"x1,5" do sometimes get better results then people with bigger and more sensitive ones (2.5"x2.5"+), just because it's cheaper and ea...

Those are some nice clean spectra for such a low activity! I'm a bit jealous of your results, as my shielding still isn't finished (I don't have much time now, but I'm working on it!) I haven't got any Trinitite samples yet, but I have an interesting piece of burned concrete from Hiroshima. It's too...

I suppose that most of us have thought about this idea at some point. Although it's definitely possible to build an improvised DIY crystal-growing furnace setup (with the end-result probably proportional to your starting budget), I don't think that it would be effective nor practical for this purpos...

Thank you for your suggestion, and also for the compliment! :) Although I'm rather new to gamma spectroscopy, I've spent ages playing with various (usually DIYed) Geiger counters (nothing too fancy because of my somewhat tight budget). I only have a nice pancake probe, two alpha sensitive Phillips t...

Cool project Svilen! I've built a few Geiger counters/monitoring stations in the past (also mostly based on Arduino), and these tube driver kits are indeed the simplest way to go. Sometimes, the output from Geiger tubes can be quite messy, so you have to use an external "pulse shaper", bef...

As far as I know (but I don't know much, tbh), using pewter is perfectly fine, at least for hobby-level gamma spectroscopy. If you can get it for reasonable price, I would go for it. Maybe it's not the optimal solution, but it should still improve your shielding by a lot.

Are there any characteristics that can confirm this is Ra226 and not something else? I'm thinking that the lack of Thorium peaks supports the Ra226 conclusion, but I'm new to this. Hi Mike, as you might already know, those typical peaks from approximately 150keV to 400keV (Ra226+Pb214) are sometime...