Testing the Effectiveness of Shielding from Beta Radiation

A number of discoveries have been achieved with the different shielding materials as a result of the aforementioned beta radiation experiment results. The discoveries made using the various shielding materials are as follows.

There is an inverse proportionality, where an increase in paper thickness led to a drop in the number of radiation counts per minute, as can be seen from the graph that was produced to represent the counts per minute in relation to the thickness of the paper. Going by the measurement of the papers used of 0.07mm each, we find that with the increase of the paper thickness there are increase of paper particles that act as absorbers of the beta rays. This also results in the increase of the distance between the source and the detection point which was the Geiger Muller Counter.

The use of aluminum shielding;

The use of aluminum shielding that had a thick of 0.01 singly are reflective of paper shielding only that the number of the foils replicating the results were few. Given that the thickness of aluminum was 7 times less than that of the paper (measuring 0.01), the implication is that the aluminum material is denser than the paper in terms of particle composition. The heavy particles are therefore responsible for the blocking of the beta rays from penetrating the material.

Standardized air beta decay;

Looking at the effectiveness of air shielding from the results it can be seen that the variation was only done through increasing of distance between the beta radiation source and the receiver. It is evident that the distance is inversely proportional to the reading of the Geiger Muller. This implies that the effectiveness is directly proportional to the distance between the source and the receiver (Abgrall et al. 2014). The experimental data generally replicated the standard values with little variations in the individual reading of counts per minute for specific distances. The general trend however, is replicated as they both reflect the direct proportionality in terms of distance and counts per effectiveness of shielding.

Conclusion

The production of beta particles is in a three-body decay hence it has various energies (Elliott et al. 2016). The energies are shielded by different particles where the increase of density of the particles increases the effectiveness of shielding. From the experiment, the effectiveness of beta radiation shielding is affected by the density factor of materials of concern hence the higher the density results to high effectiveness in shielding. It is evident that different materials have different densities and that is why the paper, aluminum and air had variation in counts per minute. The air with the least density gave highest counts per minute followed by paper and lastly the aluminum materials. From the above experiment the effectiveness of shielding from beta radiation of the materials care affected by three factors which can as well be used in minimizing the exposure of to the beta radiation. These include (Protecting Against Exposure n.d):

Time: the more the time of exposure, the more effective the materials become this calls for the minimization of the exposure time to reduce effectiveness of exposure.

Distance: the smaller the distance the higher the effectiveness of radiation hence maximization of the distance from the radiation source will reduce effectiveness.

Shielding: the shielding reduces the effectiveness of radiation hence there is need for one to shield themselves against radiation source.

References

Abgrall, N., Aguayo, E., Avignone, F. T., Barabash, A. S., Bertrand, F. E., Boswell, M., ... & Christofferson, C. D. (2014). The Majorana Demonstrator neutrinoless double-beta decay experiment. Advances in High Energy Physics, 2014.

Elliott, S. R., Rielage, K. R., Chu, P., Massarczyk, R., & White, B. (2016). The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR search for neutrinoless double beta decay (No. LA-UR-16-26561). Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

Protecting Against Exposure - ANS. ANS. Retrieved 1 November 2017, from http://nuclearconnect.org/know-nuclear/science/protecting