- #1
Marioqwe
- 68
- 4
Hello, I am trying to simulate the gammas from certain radioactive decays but I am really puzzle as to how to approach this. The site I'm using as a reference lists the intensities of the different gammas corresponding to an specific decay.
The thing that confuses me is that, for example, some intensities do not add up to 100; which is understandable since there might be more than one gamma emitted per decay. But then, how would one simulate this?
For example, Let's say I have X -> Y + gamma and let's say I have two different gammas, a and b, with intensities 50 and 60 respectively. Then, the way I think about it is that out of 100 decays, 50% of the time I get a, and 60% of the time I get b. But how does one tell a computer to do this?
It appears to me that normalizing the intensities wouldn't work and so throwing a single random number between 0 and 1 won't work. Is the best approach to just do a different random number for each intensity?
The thing that confuses me is that, for example, some intensities do not add up to 100; which is understandable since there might be more than one gamma emitted per decay. But then, how would one simulate this?
For example, Let's say I have X -> Y + gamma and let's say I have two different gammas, a and b, with intensities 50 and 60 respectively. Then, the way I think about it is that out of 100 decays, 50% of the time I get a, and 60% of the time I get b. But how does one tell a computer to do this?
It appears to me that normalizing the intensities wouldn't work and so throwing a single random number between 0 and 1 won't work. Is the best approach to just do a different random number for each intensity?