Don't those freed electrons simply have way too much energy to simply excite orbital electrons around atoms to get them to emit photons? I could never understand how ionizing radiation, nor the resulting freed electrons can simply excite atoms as it only takes a few electron volts (for example: 13.6 eV for say hydrogen) to completely ionize atoms and the *ionizing* radiation that Geiger-Müller counter detects typically has energies in the range of *THOUSANDS* to even *MILLIONS* of electron volts which as you can tell is *WAY* above the ionizing energy of any known element of the periodic table.
@@brfisher1123 to explain that a bit off topic: the Sun, has Emission in the H-Alpha line, which is a line that occurs, when an excited electron falls from the 3rd to the 2nd shell of an H-Atom. But isn't the sun made of plasma? Why should an electron be bound to a nucleus in the first place? Its in the Definition of a plasma, that electrons aren't bound. Explanation: it is rare but we have baquillion of Atoms there and if it happens even in 1/1000000 Events. It will be more than enough Events to detect it. A single Alpha particle can f*** up the electron configuration of several thousand Atoms and it just takes some few electrons transitions to detect a signal. Its a numbers game :D
Schön, diese alten ORTEC-Teile mal wieder zu sehen.
Another amazing nuclear science video! Thank you so much!
I will hope to know about PIPS detector sensor for alpha particle detection
Thanks
Hmm nice
Don't those freed electrons simply have way too much energy to simply excite orbital electrons around atoms to get them to emit photons?
I could never understand how ionizing radiation, nor the resulting freed electrons can simply excite atoms as it only takes a few electron volts (for example: 13.6 eV for say hydrogen) to completely ionize atoms and the *ionizing* radiation that Geiger-Müller counter detects typically has energies in the range of *THOUSANDS* to even *MILLIONS* of electron volts which as you can tell is *WAY* above the ionizing energy of any known element of the periodic table.
@@brfisher1123 to explain that a bit off topic: the Sun, has Emission in the H-Alpha line, which is a line that occurs, when an excited electron falls from the 3rd to the 2nd shell of an H-Atom. But isn't the sun made of plasma? Why should an electron be bound to a nucleus in the first place? Its in the Definition of a plasma, that electrons aren't bound.
Explanation: it is rare but we have baquillion of Atoms there and if it happens even in 1/1000000 Events. It will be more than enough Events to detect it.
A single Alpha particle can f*** up the electron configuration of several thousand Atoms and it just takes some few electrons transitions to detect a signal. Its a numbers game :D