Casting a Lead shield for Scionix 38B37 /w Red Bull can

[iRad]

Transient spikes can come from many sources including cosmic ray burst. If you are in an industrial area, gamma and x-ray is used in many applications, including materials inspection. Same thing if in a area of construction or roadwork, where it is used for inspecting welds in pipes and the density of foundations and other uses. Could be someone passing nearby with recent medical procedure. Trucks or other vehicles transporting active material (happens all the time...). Could also be an anomaly in the electronics. Capturing a spectrum of the energy involved with the spike could give some clue...

[kotarak]

I was on the 6th floor and sort of away major roads or construction.
What is interesting is the duration of the spike. It is very short - a single bin in the timeline - it went from 6cps, next bin is 143cps (spike) and next one is 2cps. If it was a vehicle you would expect to see a ramp up and ramp down on each side. 143cps behind 4cm of Lead on the 6th floor - I am inclined to think - it is either something in the electronics (but it only occurred once in 12 hrs) or a cosmic event.
Is there a way in PRA to find out what is the energy of these 143 cps - how do I correlate a bin in the count timeline to a bin in the pulse height histogram?

Best,

[iRad]

As far as I know, the bins just stack the pulses in them, there is no record of the when specific counts in the bin occurred. And of course, the histogram does not log energy information. Unfortunately, capturing a spectrum would probably only be by chance, and would have to be a short spectrum with an event long enough to be significant above other noise. I'm sure this type of thing happens all the time, it is just never noticed because the short duration increase in counts become insignificant as the duration of the capture time increases.

[Stratal83]

You've done an amazing job ! Props to you ! This post will be a nice source of inspiration when I'll start to build my own shield !