The Wireless Geiger Counter is an engaging device
that allows your students to explore the invisible world of radioactivity.
[Wireless Geiger Counter | Get Started]
The PASCO Wireless Geiger Counter comes with a charging cable
and a threaded rod that makes it easy to clamp to a ring stand.
After powering it on, it'll start measuring radiation,
beeping at every count.
In this case, the counts are from background radiation.
The beeps can be muted with a short press of the power button.
Two quick beeps confirm that I muted it.
The Wireless Geiger Counter can connect to either SPARKvue or PASCO Capstone software.
Let's use SPARKvue and create a graph of counts versus time.
The default is counts measured in a 30-second period.
The time interval can be changed to anything from one hour to a tenth of a second.
I'm going to set it to two seconds and click Start.
You can see the background count appear after each two-second interval.
Increasing the interval would increase the number of counts represented by each point on the graph.
After I place this red radiation sample disc under the Geiger Counter,
the graph shows a count greater than the background.
For a more accurate measurement of the sample's count,
the background should be subtracted.
What will happen if I place this piece of paper over the sample disc?
The counts dropped back to background.
The radiation from the sample can be stopped by a piece of paper.
Let's try the green disc.
It causes counts above the background, too.
Can paper stop the radiation?
Not as much.
Let's try 16 sheets of heavy-duty aluminum foil.
It stops about half the radiation.
Will 32 sheets stop all of it?
Your students will want to find out for themselves.
Now, let's try the orange disc.
The count shows it's radioactive, too.
Paper has no effect.
The radiation passes right through paper,
and 32,
and 64 sheets of foil.
Your students can use these observations
to identify what type of radiation is emitted from each disc
and to identify unknown sources of radiation.
How can we stop the gamma radiation coming from the orange disc?
You could try other materials like lead or water or...
...increase the distance.
Careful measurements of the counts versus distance
will reveal an inverse square relationship.
Remote data logging is an exciting new feature of the Wireless Geiger Counter.
It allows background radiation to be measured at remote locations and while traveling.
Just set it up, put it in your backpack, and forget it,
remote logging does the rest.
Let's set it up to measure the background radiation.
I click Start New Experiment.
Now select Remote Logging.
I'll increase sample interval to 10 minutes to get a higher background count.
The software gives an estimate of how long it can collect data based on the sensor's memory.
Battery power also needs to be considered.
I can defer the start of logging to when I press the power button
or click OK and start logging now.
I configured this Geiger Counter for remote logging a few days ago.
I wanted to answer the question, what happens to the background count when the sun goes down?
The data can be downloaded by clicking Remote Logging again.
It detects that there is logged data and asked what I want to do.
Let's download the data and display it as a graph.
Changing the x-axis to Date and Time
makes it easy to tell that the background did not change when the sun went down.
Starts at about 3:00 PM here and stayed pretty steady.
What will happen to the background in an underground parking lot or a cave? A hospital?
Driving to the mountains? Flying in a plane?
Going through airport security screening?
The possibilities are limited only by your ability to ask questions.
There's more information, videos, experiments, and useful accessories
for the Wireless Geiger Counter on the product page at pasco.com.
Thanks for watching.