Simple Thorium Linearity Check with Excel

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Sesselmann
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Simple Thorium Linearity Check with Excel

Post by Sesselmann » 08 Dec 2019, 21:22

I know we have covered this before, but the many peaks all the way up to 2614 makes Thorium a good choice for calibrating and checking the linearity of probes, and it is also easily accessible.

There are a number of things that affect the linearity of a spectrum, PMT, divider, voltage and electronics, but the one you have most control over is the voltage, so to find the optimum voltage for a probe I made myself a simple spreadsheet (attached). Just run a Th spectrum at set voltages and plot the peaks in arbitrary units and repeat this for multiple voltages. The spreadsheet normalises the columns to KeV and plots the points on a chart, making it easy to see.

It doesn't need to be more complicated than this.
Attachments
Thorium-linearity-check.xlsx
Excel spreadsheet to check linearity of probe
(493.55 KiB) Downloaded 282 times

luuk
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Re: Simple Thorium Linearity Check with Excel

Post by luuk » 08 Dec 2019, 22:35

Hi Steven,
Nice tool, simple but effective!
I like it.
Luuk

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Svilen
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Re: Simple Thorium Linearity Check with Excel

Post by Svilen » 12 Dec 2019, 00:43

I did it in some more manual way long ago , but that's handy, thanks for posting it.
Svilen

Conor Whyte
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Re: Simple Thorium Linearity Check with Excel

Post by Conor Whyte » 28 Jan 2020, 06:22

Thank you for the excellent graph. You have now inspired me to go get some Thorium dioxide today. 100g vial. :)

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Geoff
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Re: Simple Thorium Linearity Check with Excel

Post by Geoff » 01 Feb 2020, 13:24

When changing detector voltage, do you redo the pulse shape in PRA?
Geoff Van Horn

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Sesselmann
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Re: Simple Thorium Linearity Check with Excel

Post by Sesselmann » 01 Feb 2020, 20:31

Geoff wrote:
01 Feb 2020, 13:24
When changing detector voltage, do you redo the pulse shape in PRA?
Geoff,

It depends, in the GS-USB-PRO I have the volume and shape trimmer pots interconnected, so changing one also changes the other, however in the earlier GS where the shape was fixed and the gain simply changed the volume it made less of a difference.

Steven

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Geoff
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Re: Simple Thorium Linearity Check with Excel

Post by Geoff » 02 Feb 2020, 08:21

Linearity? What's that? I've always known that my go-to probe had a problem, I didn't realize how bad it was!
linearity.JPG
specs.JPG
specs.JPG (50.12 KiB) Viewed 5495 times
Geoff Van Horn

Former Alaskan living in rural Wisconsin

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Sesselmann
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Re: Simple Thorium Linearity Check with Excel

Post by Sesselmann » 03 Feb 2020, 11:10

Geoff,

Seems like your probe is struggling with the higher end, but I guess you wouldn't use a 1" detector for higher end gamma anyway.

Most detectors seem to display a convex curve, so it would be pretty neat if we had preamplifier with some kind of adjustable exponential gain, then we could straighten the darn things out :)

Steven

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