Earnshaw Medal
Earnshaw 2008 Nominees: Ciara Leong
Automated Reading of a Radon Sensor
This project was undertaken to automate the reading of a radon sensor. A track etched radon sensor will develop tracks when exposed to radon. Chemical etching can make these tracks visible under a microscope. An automated system to read the radon sensors was made which involved automatically moving the sensor under a microscope, capturing 12 images of the sensor, counting the number of tracks present and converting this into a measurement of radon concentration present in Becquerels per cubic metre. Average tracks per cm2 for this project were about 18% higher than the values obtained by the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII) for manual counting and about 7.5% lower than the values obtained by the RPII for automatic counting.
Supervisor: Dr. Ger Croke
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