• Question: What gave you the idea to use neutrons to search for drugs, bombs & illegal goods?

    Asked by to Simon on 13 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Simon Albright

      Simon Albright answered on 13 Mar 2014:

      I’d like to pretend it was my idea but it wasn’t. It’s been around for at least 20 years, probably longer.

      It’s a very clever idea though. We know how X-Rays interact, roughly speaking the heavier things (like iron, lead etc) block X-Rays well and lighter things (like plastic, clothes etc) don’t. Because of this if you have something behind a sheet of lead your X-Ray might not be able to see it so we need something which can.

      Neutrons behave very differently to X-Rays, they get stopped by plastic more effectively than by lead for example. And different energies of neutron are stopped by different things at different rates. Because they behave in such a strange way we can use them to look at things which have been hidden from X-Rays.

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