Good afternoon, our presentation is going to be on the absorption of alpha radiation.

The aim for our experiment was to investigate the absorption of alpha radiation in air and paper using a Geiger counter and to determine the range and energy of the alpha particles.

First of all, what is radioactive decay? All elements with an atomic number greater than 83 undergo radioactive decay. The process transforms a radioactive isotopes nucleus into another through the emission of alpha, beta or gamma radiation. Radioactive decay occurs in atoms because the nucleus is unstable. One of the reasons for instability is due to the neutron-to proton ratio. Light elements have a neutron-toproton ratio of about 1. The nucleus is held together by the Strong Force, which counteracts the repulsive force due to proton-proton interactions. As atomic number increases, the number of protons build up and the proton-proton interactions continue becoming stronger until the strong force is unable to counteract the repulsion. The nucleus then undergoes radioactive decay. There are three main types of decay: alpha, beta and gamma decay. But we are only going to deal with alpha decay. So how does alpha decay work? It involves the emission of a helium nucleus because there are too many protons, leading to an excessive repulsive force. Heres an example. The Americium 241 undergoes alpha decay to form Neptunium and a helium nucleus. 5 types of alpha particles can be emitted with energies of 5.486 MeV and 5.443 MeV being the most common.

Now to detect radiation, we use a device known as a Geiger counter. It is filled with a mixture of gas which may be ionized by radiation, producing positive ions and electrons. The electrons drift towards the anode and ionise more atoms, creating a current pulse that passes a resistor built within the device, resulting in a voltage pulse being produced and fed to a counter which registers every time radiation passes the tube. The operating voltage of the Geiger tube is between about 350V to 750V. At low voltages, electrons produced due to radiation have insufficient energy to ionise further gas atoms and will not be registered by the counter.

We can also use this device to measure background radiation. We are all constantly exposed to background radiation from a variety of sources such as the sun. It is a source of cosmic radiation. Our walls are also sources of radiation since the materials used for them have isotopes that are naturally radioactive. There are also trace amounts of radioactivity in our bodies, so it is important that we take this into account when doing any measurement in order to obtain valid results.

On to our experimental procedures. As said before we used a Geiger counter to detect radiation. In order to calibrate the Pulse Recorder Analyser program (PRA), we set the Geiger Tube voltage to 600 V and ran Intune with the Cobalt-60 source to record and analyse a few seconds of the signal, as seen by the sound card. The PRA program was then used to record the pulses from the detector as the voltage signal from the Geiger tube was fed into the sound card.

The radiation source used was Americium 241. We placed the Americium-241 source in the counting castle and recorded ten second counts at distances ranging from 32.5 to 41.5 mm. The closest distance with no spacing corresponded to an equivalent distance of 32.5 mm of air. Measurements with paper allowed the alpha particles to be completely blocked, allowing any background radiation or rays emitted during the decay to be determined. Subtracting the background from the initial count at every distance gave us the actual counts, which allowed us to determine the range of particles in air.Throughout the experiment, a lead brick was used to cover the counting castle to reduce any background radiation.