With a bit of time on my hands I set up a cool compton experiment today.
I used two of my new GS-USB-PRO spectrometers and two detectors in coincidence mode, the primary (scattering) detector was a 1" plastic scintillator and the secondary detector was my 2" Luuk CsI(Tl) detector.
Side Note: If you are using two of the GS-USB-PRO simultaneously they both show up in the sound panel with the same name, so it's a good idea to connect one first and select it in PRA before connecting the second one.
So I followed the standard PRA procedure and did the pulse shape acquisition (Left and Right Channels together) then did the energy calibration with my Cs137 source.
I then obtained coincidence spectra at various angles and recorded the observed peak.My Cs137 source is rather weak for this purpose, so each spectrum took some time, but it was enough to see the peak.
I was pleased to see that the peaks coincided with the theoretical formula.
- Compton Equation
- compton.png (4.61 KiB) Viewed 2099 times
- Compton Experiment Setup
- Compton Scatter.png (37.09 KiB) Viewed 2090 times
This is a pretty standard experiment carried out by physics undergraduates, but this is the first time I have done it, and I am pleased to see how it worked.
Steven
