2) i am looking for advice, and possibly for a partner in an
anticipated experiment. Here is a brief description.
a) I really need a simple MCA analyzer; even a 16 channels dinosaur
would be OK. If you have a working MCA that will not be needed for
several months then please allow me to use, I will be glad to pay for
the UPS back-and-forth expenses.
b) The cost of new MCA is about $4000. That is a lot of money for a
trivial application I have in mind. I suspect that someone familiar
with digital electronics, even a student, can build a simple device for
me, probably for less than $400. That is what I would call limited
partnership. Full partnership in an anticipated CMNS experiment (to be
performed with Dr. R. Oriani, a retired electrochemist from the
University of Minnesota) would also be welcome. But that is a different
issue, to be discussed in private.
c) In our application pules will be arriving very infrequently,
typically several per hour, or so. And the total number of pulses to
analyze will be less that two or three hundred per experiment. A
sophisticated new ORTEC setup (SOLOIST, costing $3500) for counting
alpha particles at very slow rates (advertised background is one pulse
per hour or less) will be used. The Soloist output is a standard
linear amplifier delivering positive pulses (0 to 10 volts) whose
duration will be several microseconds. Using a standard (fast and high
resolution) MCA seems to be an overkill; sorting alpha particles into
10 bins, each 1 MeV wide, would be just fine for us, at least in the
first phase.
What I have in mind is to print amplitudes during experiments (lasting
several days each) at the times of arrival of individual pulses. Then
sorting can be performed manually, or with a simple program (after
creating an ASCII data file). An 5-bits ADC, sampling at the rate of 2
MHz would probably be sufficient. Plus an interface to a common
printer, or to a laptop computer storing amplitudes of consecutive
pulses into a file.
Criticism, comment and suggestions will be appreciated, even from those
who believe that CMNS is voodoo science. Oriani has vary impressive new
results by using CR-39 detectors but information about energies of
particles, emitted from a Ni cathode after the electrolysis, would be
even more convincing that something unexpected is indeed taking place.
Alpha particles emitted at very slow rate cannot possibly produce
measurable amounts of excess heat reported by many CMNS researchers.
Ludwik Kowalski
Let the perfect not be the enemy of the good.