Comparison of Compton Edges Measured by a Scintillator

Trevor M. Leach, Sean Duke, and Marisa Voss

Department of Physics, Wheaton College, IL 60187
(Dated: March 5, 2015)

Abstract
In this experiment, we found Compton edge energies for three isotopes, Na-22, Co-60 and Cs-137.
Using data from a scintillator, we found the energies of their main photo peaks and calculated a
Compton edge energy for each. Then we compared our results to those calculated from data given
by the National Nuclear Data Centers table of nuclides1 . From our comparison we found that our
scintillator was measuring the Compton scattering of our isotopes with acceptable accuracy. The
greatest dispairity we found between the value from the scintillator and the accepted value was
4.8 and three of the four results were within 2 .

I.

INTRODUCTION

This experiment is one that is done in college physics classrooms all across the country.
You can find many other examples of this experiment from a multitude of schools with some
careful searching on the Web of Science internet database4 . Its a pretty basic experiment
based on decades old theories. The first big physics idea in our experiment is the Compton
eect. It was discovered by Arthur Holly Compton in 19222 . The Compton eect occurs
when a gamma ray elastically scatters o an electron after a head on collision, losing some
of its energy to the electron. The energy that the gamma ray leaves the collision with is
what we are trying to find in our experiment. This energy is known as the Compton edge
energy. In order to do this we will also need to make use of the photoelectric eect. The
photoelectric eect was discovered by Heinrich Rudolph Hertz in 1887 while doing work with
radio waves3 . By using principles of the photoelectric eect, our scintillator will be able to
measure the photo peaks of our isotopes and help us to calculate the energy change of the
gamma rays being produced. The photoelectric eect is when a gamma ray liberates an
electron from an atom and produces a burst of light. This light is what our scintillator is
actually detecting. By using the data from the scintillator and known energy values of the
photo peaks of our electrons we will be able to find measured values for the photo peaks of
our electrons and thus be able to calculate the energy associated with each ones Compton
edge. Then, we can compare the the Compton edge energies we found from our scintillator
measurements to Compton edge energies calculated from values for the photo peak energies
of the isotopes found in NNDCs table of nuclides1 . Through this comparison, we will be
able to see how accurately our scintillator is measuring the gamma ray energies.

II.

THEORY

In our experiment we will be measuring the photo-peak energies of Na-22,Cs-137, and

Co-60. Each of which have their own unique method of decay. As each isotope decays it will
release gamma rays of dierent energy levels. Some of which will collide with surrounding
electrons and Compton scatter. Our scintillator will measure the gamma rays being released
over a period of time and count them based on their energy level. Each energy level will
be assigned a bin number and the scintillator will keep track of how many gamma rays it
2

FIG. 1. Scintillator Data for Na-22.

measures for each energy level. An example of decay data as presented from a scintillator
is given in Fig. 1.
From the scintillator data, we will need to find the Compton edge energy of each photo
peak of each isotope. To do this, we will first need to find the exact bin location of the
center of the photo peak. Now it stands to reason that a photo peak ought to be normally
distributed around its highest energy. So, the first thing we did was to fit each photo peak
in our raw data and its uncertainty to a normal distribution, given in Eq.1, where x0 is the
location of the center of the distribution and

is the standard deviation of the distribution.

1
GX , (x) = p e
2

(x X)2
2 2

(1)

An Example of one of the fits that we did to a normal distribution is given in Figure II.
Uncertainty in the counts is just the square root of the counts, a standard for calculating
uncertainty of this type, and the uncertainty in bin number is simply 1, meaning 1 bin.
Then, we used the x0 of our fit as the bin location of the photo peak. Next we looked up
the energies of each photo peak in the Table of Nuclides from the National Nuclear Data
Center1 . Then, we plotted the bins of the photo peaks with the known energy of our photo
peak from the NNDC. The uncertainty in the photo peak energy came from the value given
3

FIG. 2. Gaussian fit to the main photo peak of Na-22 isotope. The reduced

of the fit in this

example is 8.0531 with 41 degrees of freedom. This is higher than desired, but stems from the fact
that the numbers of counts are very high, so we will accept the fit despite its large reduced

2.

by the NNDC, uncertainty in the bin number is again just 1. We found a monte-carlo linear
fit of this data given in Fig. 3.
Then, we used the fit to find the energy that we actually measured with our scintillator.
Once we had our energy, we used Eq. 2.

1
Ef

1
1 cos()
=
.
Ei
m e c2

(2)

where Ef is the Compton edge energy,Ei is our measured energy of the photopeak, me is
the mass of an electron, and c is the speed of light,to find the Compton Edge energy. We
also calculated Compton edge data for each value from the NNDC so that we could see how
well our scintillator measured the photo peaks.
4

FIG. 3. Linear fit of known energy levels in measured bin number to find measured energy levels
of photopeaks.

of the fit is 0.0053 which indicates an acceptable fit.

FIG. 4. Our Experimental Setup

III.

METHODS

For our experiment we used a Scintillation Detector made by Alpha Spectra Inc. in
conjunction with an Ortec DigiBase to measure decay counts of our isotopes. We connected
our detector with the computer program Maestro. A diagram showing our setup is given in
Fig. 4.
In Maestro we began by changing the settings to those best for our experiment. We used
a fine gain setting of 1.0 and a time setting of 2.0 microseconds. We set the gate to o
5

FIG. 5. Experimental Results

and the voltage to 800 V. When we had the right settings we began to collect data.
The first thing we did was measure the background radiation by simply running the
scintillator for five minutes. We did this in order to subtract the radiation from the environment from the data we will measure for the radiation of our isotopes. Then we moved on to
measuring the isotopes. To measure their decay we used small disks with samples of each
isotope in them. In order to not have the other samples interfere with our measurements we
only took one to our desk at a time. For each isotope we taped the sample disk to a piece of
wood and placed them about 2 cm from the end of the scintillator, centered in front of its
nose. Then, we collected data in Maestro until the main photo peak of the isotope had at
least 5000 counts in its center bin. We repeated this process for Na-22 to insure that the
energy bins remained constant throughout the experiment. Once we had the raw data for
the counts in each bin for each isotope we uploaded this data into MATLAB for analysis.

IV.

RESULTS

The Compton edge energies that we found from our scintillator measurements and the
Table of Nuclides from NNDC are given in Fig. 5.
The Compton edge energies that we were able to find were within reasonable confidence
limits of the energies we calculated from the accepted photo peak energies. The furthest
disparity we found was in our Cs-137 measurement which had a variance 4.8 . Our best
measurement was of Na-22 where the Compton edge energy we measured was within 1 of
the accepted value. In the lesser Co-60 decay the Compton edge we found was within 1.5
6

of the accepted value and the greater Co-60 decay our value was within 1.8 of the accepted
value. All of these values are within reasonable confidence limits. Thus, we are able to
conclude that our scintillator measured the photo peaks of these isotopes with acceptable
accuracy and is a adequate way to measure nuclear decay.

trevor.leach@my.wheaton.edu

sean.duke@my.wheaton.edu

marisa.voss@my.wheaton.edu

National Nuclear Data Center, Table of Nuclides, <http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/chart/>,

(2/25/2015).

The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, Compton Eect, Encyclopedia Britannica, <http:

//www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/130379/Compton-effect>, (2/25/2015).

The

Editors

of

Encyclopedia

Britannica,

Photoelectric

Eect,

Encyclopedia Bri-

tannica, <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/457841/photoelectric-effect>,
(2/25/2015).
4

Web Of Science Online Database, <http://apps.webofknowledge.com>, (2/25/2015).