Talk:Gamma-ray spectrometer

Scope
This article's title is severely misleading. Gamma-ray spectrometry is a widespread technique in fundamental nuclear physics under conditions having almost nothing to do with the application featured in this article, other than use of some of the same hardware. A different, more descriptive title should be found. -- Bill-on-the-Hill 04:27, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Exactly what I was thinking. Most of the current material should be made a subsection of this article (under "applications") or even split out into a different article (something like Gamma ray spectrometry in space exploration). —Keenan Pepper 02:38, 3 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Gamma-ray spectrometry is also used for remote sensing for distribution of thorium, potassium and uranium on the Earth's surface, in fields such as geology and environmental science.Afrotrance 03:33, 4 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Confusing title. Should be a disambiguation at the least between generic gamma ray spectrometers and this specific GRS (which also appears to measure neutrons)Judge Nutmeg 04:56, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

I have attempted to remedy this problem somewhat by writing a more general introductory paragraph, and making the planetary application a section with subsections. I have also added a general section on gamma-ray spectroscopy with a link to the article, and also a section on astronomical gamma-ray experiments which lists some (but by no means all) of these flown in space, with a few links. These are still all space applications, so numerous laboratory applications in nuclear and particle physics, industry (oil well-logging), etc are still left out. Probably the gamma-ray spectroscopy article needs to have its strictly instrumental material moved here, and be expanded with sections to cover data analysis, scientific applications, etc. Wwheaton

Note also that the title of article suggests it should be focussed narrowly on experiments and instrumental techniques. (talk) 21:26, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

The hyphen: gamma-ray vs gamma ray
Note that it is standard to hyphenate the adjective, but not the noun. Thus, "gamma-ray astronomy", but "high-energy gamma rays". (Similarly for X rays and cosmic rays, of course.) Wwheaton (talk) 21:09, 20 June 2008 (UTC)

An organizational suggestion?
The organization of this article needs improvement, in my opinion. The organization problem is not simplified by the existence of a parallel article, gamma-ray spectroscopy, which overlaps with it a good deal. On the other hand, we do have quite a bit of good material, it's just somewhat scattered, and having useful material helps.

I am thinking that it might be best to put the instrumental information into this, "Gamma-ray spectrometer" article, including general types (eg, scintillators and solid state detectors, etc), design issues and problems, detector response matrices, with links out to details of specific instrumental instances that are representative, or examples of the current state-of-the-art.

Then on the other hand, let the "Gamma-ray spectroscopy" article be more general: overview of what gamma-ray spectroscopy is about, its history, nuclear line sources, continuum sources, applications and research areas in nuclear physics, medicine, astrophysics, health physics, and environmental protection, forensics, weapons detection and interdiction, data analysis, and overall systems design in which the detector itself is just a component of the whole, etc (obviously not in the above order; I'm just typing as they come to mind).

Does this overall scheme sound like a good idea? My central idea is just to move material around to fit the existing article titles more accurately, and then try to improve the organization within each of those two articles, with the notion that the subject of detector hardware and technology is so big it does really need a dedicated article anyhow, so that the partition between "detector hardware" and "everything else" may make sense.

Based on previous experience, I don't really expect a huge amount of response to this comment, but after a decent interval I may just take off on it if I hear no objections or better suggestions. I plan to post a similar message on the talk page of the other article. Thanks Wwheaton (talk) 05:19, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

JXD 1000
on e H3ELL OF A THING —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.16.190 (talk) 12:33, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

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