scintillation counter

noun

1. a device for detecting and measuring radioactivity, having a crystal scintillator, a photoelectric cell sensitive to the light from scintillations, and an amplifier.

scintillation counter

noun

1. an instrument for detecting and measuring the intensity of high-energy radiation. It consists of a phosphor with which particles collide producing flashes of light that are detected by a photomultiplier and converted into pulses of electric current that are counted by electronic equipment

Word History and Origins

Origin of scintillation counter¹

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

Vollmann treks through communities in the vicinity of the Fukushima plant, measuring radiation with a dosimeter and a scintillation counter wherever he goes.

From Washington Post

Radioactive counts were determined by a scintillation counter and scintillation reads were normalized to the total protein concentration of each sample.

From Nature

"If brains were radium, you couldn't make a flicker on a scintillation counter."

From Project Gutenberg

Look at that—recording tape from my scintillation counter.

From Project Gutenberg