- #1
quantumlolz
- 8
- 0
Hi all,
Got a bit of a problem with a lab experiment at uni (I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, mods feel free to move it if necessary!)
Anyway: We're trying to get a plot of efficiency against energy for a planar germanium detector. We've got spectra for different sources at a fixed distance from the detector.
The main question really is: how do we calculate efficiency? I've got Gilmore's "Practical Gamma Ray Spectroscopy" book in front of me opened at the efficiency calibration section. The only one that seems to mention that the source-detector distance is important (they specify in the lab script that we get spectra at a particular source/detector distance...) is absolute full energy peak efficiency. The equation given for this is:
efficiency = full energy peak count rate/(source strength x probabiltiy of emission of the particular gamma ray being measured)
(I think this is the one we're meant to be using - but how does one then calculate the probability??)
I'll be massively massively grateful to anyone that can help, because I'm really pretty confused...
Got a bit of a problem with a lab experiment at uni (I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, mods feel free to move it if necessary!)
Anyway: We're trying to get a plot of efficiency against energy for a planar germanium detector. We've got spectra for different sources at a fixed distance from the detector.
The main question really is: how do we calculate efficiency? I've got Gilmore's "Practical Gamma Ray Spectroscopy" book in front of me opened at the efficiency calibration section. The only one that seems to mention that the source-detector distance is important (they specify in the lab script that we get spectra at a particular source/detector distance...) is absolute full energy peak efficiency. The equation given for this is:
efficiency = full energy peak count rate/(source strength x probabiltiy of emission of the particular gamma ray being measured)
(I think this is the one we're meant to be using - but how does one then calculate the probability??)
I'll be massively massively grateful to anyone that can help, because I'm really pretty confused...