A remote radioactivity experiment

• Autores: Kemi Jona, Mark Vondracek
• Localización: The Physics Teacher, ISSN 0031-921X, Vol. 51, Nº. 1, 2013, pág. 25
• Idioma: inglés
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Imagine a high school with very few experimental resources and limited budgets that prevent the purchase of even basic laboratory equipment. For example, many high schools do not have the means of experimentally studying radioactivity because they lack Geiger counters and/or good radioactive sources. This was the case at the first high school one of us (MV) worked at, and after talking with numerous colleagues we know this is still the case at many schools. What options are there then for physics teachers to allow their students to experimentally investigate certain characteristics of radioactivity, such as how distance affects the intensity of radiation coming from a radioactive source? There are computer simulations that can be run, or perhaps the teacher has a light sensor and tries to make an analogy between the intensity of light from a light bulb and the intensity of radiation from a radioactive source based on geometric arguments to get an inverse-square law. But for many there is no direct experimental option if one does not possess a Geiger counter and good radioactive sample. It is for that teacher and class of students that an online, remote radioactivity experiment was created.