Investigation of Attenuation Properties of Liquid Materials by Gamma Absorption-Scattering Method

Abstract

In this work, a system for the characterization of materials using transmission and scattering of gamma rays is described and used to assess the attenuation properties of some liquid materials. The apparatus consists of a 45 mCi point source of 124Am and thin NaI (Tl) detector. Measurements are presented for sucrose solutions with densities ranging from 1 to 1.86 g/cm3. For the absorbance, the solution Z (0.66 g/cm3) with the lowest density has higher absorption with chances to attenuate more than some higher density absorber solution like the sucrose (1.37 g/cm3) while sucrose (1.86 g/cm3) solution with the highest density possessing highest absorption and attenuation capabilities. This however did not fully accord to the conformity with the theory in low-density absorber which will give rise to less attenuation than a high-density absorber since the chances of an interaction between the radiation and the atoms of the absorber are relatively lower. Consequently, the variation of the ratio of scattered and transmitted intensity against the density of the solutions display some arbitrary dependence with energy of the photons interacting with the density of the absorber solution with some little deviation to the exact ideal scattering and transmission case. With gamma rays, most likely the scattering is in the forward direction and that the probability of scattering backwards or in larger angles is relatively constant as the angle approaches 90.