For your senior project, you are designing a Geiger tube for detecting radiation

Question

For your senior project, you are designing a Geiger tube for detecting radiation in the nuclear physics laboratory. This instrument will consist of a long metal cylindrical tube that has a long straight metal wire running down its central axis. The diameter of the wire will be 0.450 mm and the inside diameter of the tube will be 3.64 cm. The tube is to be filled with a dilute gas in which an electrical discharge (breakdown of the gas) occurs when the electric field reaches 5.60*10^6 N/C. Determine the maximum linear charge density on the wire if breakdown of the gas is not to happen. Assume that the tube and the wire are infinitely long.

Explanation / Answer

If we let E = electric field and = linear charge densitythen:
Flux = (L)/
We can rewrite this as E(2*r*L) = (L)/
Then solving for the linear charge density we get=*E*2*r and from here we can just plug innumbers...

= (8.85e-12)*(5.60e6)*(2)*(.000225) = 77.8e-9C/m
or 77.8 nC

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse F
• Subjects

---

---

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.