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If OP is worried about the equipment being radioactive, I'd like to reassure that Geiger counter electronics and RPi are not particularly more radioactive than
by picture 4y ago
If OP is worried about the equipment being radioactive, I'd like to reassure that Geiger counter electronics and RPi are not particularly more radioactive than any other household or natural object. A Geiger–Müller tube is just a canister of low pressure Penning mixture, mostly noble gasses like argon or neon, and some other gasses added for quenching. A voltage is applied across leads of the tube, and a count is detected whenever the tube conducts due to being excited by passing ionizing radiation. There's nothing in this setup that creates ionizing radiation.
Interesting to note that, semiconductor encapsulating epoxies are often manufactured to be extra non-radioactive, as presence of even small amounts of naturally occurring trace radioactivity, when directly against the semiconductor die without any distance to attenuate alpha particles, can cause circuits to experience much more errors like bit flips or latch up.
- imglorp 4y agoI'm curious why there is no solid state detector? We've had tons of advancements in solid state optical devices like emitters. But have there been no advancements to radiation detection in 100 years since the G-M tube was invented?
- picture 4y agoThere absolutely are solid state detectors and major innovations! People nowadays use scintillator detectors with photomultipliers, for things like research and more precise counters. Scintillation counters use some material, often a plastic, that "scintillate," meaning it can absorb high energy particles and re-emit them as lower energy photons. The low energy photons are then amplified though various means, from photoelectric tubes similar to earlier night vision technology, to all integrated silicon chips [0] In general, scintillation counters have the benefit of more precision and better ability to detect alpha particles (like GM tubes with quartz windows) and also don't require high voltages to drive. I think they're a cool example of technology modernization, where we go from the somewhat janky, almost steampunk aesthetic of soviet geiger tubes driven by crude looking flyback transformers, to low voltage, highly precise, extremely integrated and miniaturized modern detectors powered by semiconductors. [0] https://www.onsemi.com/products/sensors/photodetectors-sipm-spad/silicon-photomultipliers-sipm/c-series-sipm https://www.onsemi.com/products/sensors/photodetectors-sipm-...
- imglorp 4y agoInteresting! Thanks for the good information.