10 unusual detector materials

The past century has generated some creative ideas for tracking particles. Hans had been waiting in the darkened room for 45 minutes. It was a dull part of his day, but acclimating his eyes was a necessary part of his experiment—counting faint sparkles of light caused by alpha particles deflecting off a thin metal foil. The experiment was part of a series organized by Ernest Rutherford in 1908, and it led to the discovery of the atomic nucleus. Rutherford’s assistant, physicist Hans Geiger, ...