Encyclopedia > Geiger counter

  Article Content

Geiger counter

A Geiger counter measures ionizing radiation. Geiger counters can detect alpha, beta, and gamma radiation, but not neutrons. The sensor is a Geiger-Müller tube, a gas-filled tube that briefly conducts electricity when a particle or photon of radiation briefly makes the gas conductive. The instrument amplifies this signal and displays it to the user.

Hans Geiger developed the Geiger counter in 1928.

The Geiger-muller tube is one form of a class of radiation detectors called ion chambers. Ion chambers instrumented to both detect radiation and determine particle energy levels are called Proportional counters.

Other devices detecting radiation include dosimeters, semiconductor diode detectors[?], scintillation counters, track detectors[?], cloud chambers[?], bubble chambers[?], spark chambers[?], neutron detectors[?] and microcalorimeters[?].



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

... Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the bill of rights which forms part of the Constitution of Canada adopted in 1982. The Charter developed out of the United ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 26.5 ms