All “Nuclear Physics and Radioactivity” experiments

Samples Comparison

Download printable version Difficult Execution Time Data Analysis Radioactive Sources Yes No Equipment: SP5630EN/ENP - Enviromental Kit  Purpose of the experiment: This activity shows how to compare different spectra together. Fundamentals: Spectra comparison is a very common procedure in statistics and physics and consist of the superposition of different spectra, taken in the same

Soil sample identification

Download printable version Difficult Execution Time Data Analysis Radioactive Sources Yes No Equipment: SP5630EN/ENP - Enviromental Kit  Purpose of the experiment: Record the energy spectrum of the Soil sample and identify the peaks, after the energy calibration, by knowing the decay chain of Thorium and Uranium. Fundamentals: Natural radioactivity has several sources that can

Fertilizer and photopeak identification

Download printable version Difficult Execution Time Data Analysis Radioactive Sources No Gamma Equipment: SP5630EN/ENP - Enviromental Kit  Beta Radioactive Source Purpose of the experiment: Record the energy spectrum of Fertilizer sample and identify the Potassium peak. The experience will guide the user to select a ROI and perform a Gaussian fit on the peak.

Background Measurements

Download printable version Difficult Execution Time Data Analysis Radioactive Sources No No Equipments SP5630EN/ENP - Enviromental Kit  Purpose of the experiment: Measurement of the background radioactivity to be subtracted from the energy spectra of the samples. Fundamentals: The main contributors to the background energy spectrum are the gamma radiations that originate from naturally occurring

Energy calibration of System based on LYSO crystal and Fertilizer sample

Download printable version Difficult Execution Time Data Analysis Radioactive Sources No No Equipment: SP5630EN/ENP Environmental KIT - Gamma Radiation Measurements Purpose of the experiment: Recording γ energy spectra of several radioactive sources and detecting the photo-peaks to calibrate the response of the system is the main goal of the experiment. Fundamentals: The calibration

Statistics

Difficult Execution Time Data Analysis Radioactive Sources No Gamma Hardware setup This experiment guide is referred to the SP5620CH educational kit. If you don’t have this kit, choose your own from the following list to visualize the related experiment guide: SP5600AN/D - Educational Beta Kit Equipment SP5620CH - Cosmic Hunter Purpose of the experiment

The EasyPET: a novel concept for an educational cost-effective positron emission 2D scanner

September 24th, 2021| |CAEN Experiments, Nuclear Imaging - PET, Nuclear Physics and Radioactivity, Nuclear Physics and Radioactivity

The EasyPET concept proposed here, protected under a patent by the University of Aveiro, aims to realize a simple and affordable small dimension Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner. This innovative system is based on a single pair of detectors and a rotating mechanism with two degrees of freedom reproducing the functionalities of an entire PET ring. A 2D imaging prototype has been designed, commissioned and engineered, targeted to high level education for physics, engineering and nuclear medicine students. In this paper the performance of the prototype is reported, with a focus on the imaging capability and on the measurement of the uncertainty in the reconstruction of the source position. In addition, a detailed analysis is dedicated to the slice sensitivity and in particular to the effect of the energy threshold on the coincidence event selection.

Training Future Engineers to Be Ghostbusters: Hunting for the Spectral Environmental Radioactivity

September 24th, 2021| |CAEN Experiments, Environmental radioactivity

Although environmental radioactivity is all around us, the collective public imagination often associates a negative feeling to this natural phenomenon. To increase the familiarity with this phenomenon we have designed, implemented, and tested an interdisciplinary educational activity for pre-collegiate students in which nuclear engineering and computer science are ancillary to the comprehension of basic physics concepts.

An EDUGATE simulation toolkit based on the educational EasyPET

September 24th, 2021| |CAEN Experiments, Nuclear Imaging - PET, Nuclear Physics and Radioactivity, Nuclear Physics and Radioactivity

EasyPET is a new concept of a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner using an innovative acquisition method based on two rotation axes for the movement of detector pairs. Due to its simplicity, it is suitable for education purposes, to teach students about the PET technology and its basic concepts, from the radiation detecting and analogue pulse analysis to the coincidence sorting and image reconstruction. The concept allows achieving high and uniform position resolution over the whole eld of view (FoV), by eliminating parallax errors due to the depth of interaction (DoI), which are typical of ring-based PET systems, so quality images are obtained even without state-of-the-art image reconstruction algorithms. The technology developed at the University of Aveiro with a patent-pending, is licensed to CAEN S.p.A, and included in the educational catalogue of the company. In this work, a simulation toolkit based in the Edugate platform was developed to simulate the EasyPET system. It can simulate all the physical aspects of the product, such us the scanning range, variable Field-of-View (FOV), scintillator energy resolution, coincidence time and energy window, among others. A simple image reconstruction algorithm based on Filtered-back-projection (FBP) is implemented. The toolkit allows a quick analysis in classroom of the simulation results. The platform was also used to study the new EasyPET 3D version, and a simulation of a NEMA NU 4-2008 IQ phantom was performed, demonstrating the capability of the platform not only for education purposes but also for research.

Laboratorio di Fisica 1

September 24th, 2021| |CAEN Experiments, Nuclear Physics and Radioactivity, Nuclear Physics and Radioactivity, Particle Detector Characterization, Silicon Photomultipliers

Il radon è un gas radioattivo, inodore, incolore e insapore; tutte caratteristiche che non lo rendono percepibile dai nostri sensi e perciò difficile da individuare e da quantificarne la presenza. Esso, derivato dal decadimento dell’uranio presente nelle rocce e nel suolo, si trova principalmente nei locali, specie quelli a diretto contatto con il suolo, come cantine e scantinati, con possibilità tuttavia di arrivare ad irradiarsi anche negli ambienti dei piani più alti. Il pericolo maggiore del gas radon è correlato all’inalazione: inspirato in quantitativi in eccesso e per periodi prolungati può infatti provocare seri danni alla salute, in particolare ai polmoni, qualificandosi come seconda causa di rischio per l’insorgenza di un tumore, dopo il fumo. La prima prevenzione per combattere questo gas è la costante areazione dei locali nei quali è riconosciuta la sua presenza