This year I had the rare opportunity to meet the worlds leading scientists in calorimetry, as the IEEE were holding the Nuclear Science Symposium here in Sydney, at the new Convention Centre.
https://www.eventclass.org/contxt_ieee2 ... ne-program
Despite most of the exhibitors being large multi-national companies I figured it was an opportunity not to be missed (after all I have no travel costs) so I signed up for a booth. As an exhibitor I had full access to all the talks and workshops for one person. The convention started last Saturday and I spent the weekend and Monday attending a few workshops on electronic circuits and scintillators, which was very interesting, I then spent most of Tuesday to Thursday standing at my booth explaining to puzzled scientists how we do spectrometry for $499.00. Two Japanese scientists literally burst out laughing when they saw my price list :D (as far as I could tell, I was the only exhibitor with a price list).
It seemed completely utopian to be in a place with so many people who understand the physics of photon spectrometry, I could literally walk up and chat with anyone about anything which was really fun. Most of these guys were working on crazy high end stuff, like computer chips with 40 MHz sampling and detectors for the LHC, but essentially they are up against the same issues we are dealing with, such as s/n ratios, pulse shape discrimination, preamplifier gain, etc.. same stuff just a thousand times faster.
At the booth I demonstrated the new GS-USB-PRO with my CsI(Tl) detector and since I had no shield for it I used the new background subtraction feature in PRA and was getting a perfect 5.8% resolution with PRA, some of the sales people came over from the Ortec booth and other exhibitors and could hardly believe my spectrum. Most of them couldn't demonstrate anything anyway because they obviously couldn't bring sources.
The Buzz word at this convention was SiPM, everyone was talking about it, it seems to be the next big thing, so I need to get my hands on some and start doing some R&D on it. Otherwise there was also a lot of new scintillator materials which looked interesting, Eu doped Strontium Iodide looks very promising, it has fantastic resolution and apparently no internal decay like lanthanum Bromide. Saint Gobain also had a new type of Sodium Iodide for neutron detection which they promise has a very good separation. I bartered myself to a 1" Stilbene crystal with the guy next to my booth and gave him a GS-1100A in exchange , will couple it to a 1" PMT and see if I can detect neutrons with it.
All up I had a great time, met some smart people and handed out quite a few price lists, some of which hopefully turns into orders.
Next year it's going to be in Manchester UK, apparently expected to be a lot bigger.
Steven
- Gammaspectacular Booth at IEEE Sydney
- Gammaspectacular Bench at IEEE Sydney
