Program Overview

Program Overview

The university program in question is PHY209 Radiation Physics, an 8-point subject that introduces physical concepts and laws related to radiation generation and interaction. The program covers mathematical and computational methods used in describing the behavior of radiation, including broad areas of study such as concepts of modern physics, elementary nuclear physics, radiation generation and interaction, radiation metrology, introduction to dosimetry, applicable mathematical methods, and radiation counting statistics.

Subject Information

Grading System

The grading system for this subject is HD/FL.

Duration

The duration of this subject is one session.

School

The school offering this subject is the School of Biomedical Sciences.

Enrolment Restrictions

This subject is available to students in B App Sc (Medical Imaging) Conversion or to any student having obtained special approval from the subject co-ordinator.

Subject Relationships

PHY209 includes methods and principles necessary for successful and efficient study of PHY210.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

• solve problems of a conceptual, numeric or symbolic nature in the specific individual syllabus areas
• relate concepts and physical laws to phenomena involving radiation in an exact, specific, and accurate fashion, and demonstrate such an ability in the solution of problems
• deduce appropriate analytical and/or computational methods to fulfil both of the above objectives

Syllabus

This subject will cover the following topics:

• Mathematical & Computational Methods: Brief review of high school level mathematics pertinent to radiation physics, elementary aspects of series and numerical methods, use of software (esp. spreadsheets and Excel) in computation
• Concepts of Modern Physics: Energy-Mass equivalence, wave-particle natures, basic atomic structure, nuclear decay laws and modes, elementary aspects of particle physics
• Radiation Generation: Definition of radiation, characteristic and continuous X ray spectra, and gamma spectra, thick and thin target X ray generation, point versus plane sources
• Radiation-Matter Interaction: Charged and uncharged particle interactions, photoelectric, Compton and Pair production events, Bethe-Bloch model, chance and the exponential attenuation law, parameters of photon survival
• Radiation Metrology: Definition of radiation measurement quantities, particle and energy fluence, particle flux and intensity, exposure and kerma, mean and 'point' quantities
• Introduction to Radiation Dosimetry: Absorbed dose D, electronic equilibrium, relationships between beam quantities and D, the f factor
• Radiation Detection: Principles of radiation detection, radiation detector types
• Radiation Counting Statistics: Poisson statistics, probability distributions, basic z, t and chi squared tests for radiation counts

Residential School

This subject contains a 3-day Optional Residential School.