On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 11:09 PM, Jeff Berkowitz pdx...@gmail.com wrote:
A friend (Mike, one of our little group here in Portland) found a
relatively low-cost way to rent a neutron detector:
http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.817517/sc.7/category.13851/.f
Be careful with the neutron detectors. Fleischmann and Pons borrowed a
low-end health monitor at one point, and the results ended up raising more
questions than they answered. A group at Georgia Tech, which thought they
had replicated the report of neutrons, were contacted at one point by
Caltech about how they were going about the experiment. Then one of the
group held a BF3 detector they were using in his hand, and the count
doubled. Apparently the detectors were behaving like thermometers -- the
hotter the cell, whether it was thought to be active or just filled with
hot water, the more neutrons that were detected. The Georgia Tech group
ended up retracting.
Frank Close gives the impression that neutron detection is as much an art
as a science, that accurate neutron detection of low fluxes requires a lot
of expertise and that neutron detectors are temperamental things whose
signal can vary when they are whacked or when the cosmic rays coming down
change over time.
Eric
