Notes on Modern Physics and Ionizing Radiation

Abelson, Philip H., 1991, "Mineral Dusts and Radon in Uranium Mines." Science 254, p. 777.

Barut, A. O., Odabasi, H., and van der Merwe, A., editors, 1991, Selected Popular Writings of E. U. Condon. Sprinter-Verlag, N.Y.

Baumeister, W., Fringeli, U. P., Hahn, M., Kopp, F., and Seredynski, J., 1976, "Radiation Damage in Tripalmitin Layers Studied by Means of Infrared Spectroscopy and Electron Micoscopy." Biophysical J. 16, p. 791-810.

Bevington, Philip R., 1969, Data Reduction and Error Analysis for the Physical Sciences. McGraw-Hill, New York. Eq. (7-5), page 121. Chapter Four is on propagation of error. Includes many methods with full justification and FORTRAN subroutine codes.

Blake, C. C. F. and Phillips, D. C., 1962, "Effects of X-irradiation on single crystals of myoglobin." Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation at the Molecular Level, p. 183-191; proceedings of a symposium held at Brno, 2-6 July, 1962; published by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Bodansky, David, Robkin, Maurice A., and Stadler, David R. (editors) 1987, Indoor Radon and Its Hazards. U. of Washington Press, Seattle. As reviewed in Hubbard, 1989.

Buhr, Werner, Klein, Werner, and Pressler, S., 1983, "Electron impact excitation and uv emission in the Franck-Hertz experiment." Am J Phys 51 p 810-814.

Burbidge, E. Margaret, Burbidge, Geoffrey, Fowler, William A., and Hoyle, Fred, 1957, "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars." Reviews of Modern Physics 29 pages 547-650.

Cameron, John R. and Skofronick, James G., 1978, Medical Physics. John Wiley & Sons, New York. See pages 424 (image intensifiers) and 466 (well detectors).

Cathcart, Brian, 2004, The Fly in the Cathedral. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.

Cember, Herman, 1969, Introduction to Health Physics. Pergamon Press (Oxford).

Cioffari, Edmunds Jr., 1978, Experiments in College Physics, 6th Edition. (D. C. Heath, Toronto.) See the discussion around page 394.

Cleveland, William S., and McGill, Robert, 1985, "Graphical Perception and Graphical Methods for Analyzing Scientific Data." Science 229, 828-833.

Cothern, C. Richard, and Smith, James E. (editors) 1987, Environmental Radon. Plenum, NY. As reviewed in Hubbard, 1989.

CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics: see Weast.

Crewe, Albert V., 1971, "A High-Resolution Scanning Electron Microscope." Scientific American, April issue, p. 26.

Demopoulos, Harry B., 1973, "The Basis of Free Radical Pathology." Federation Proceedings 32 p. 1859-1861.

Donelly, B. and Jensen H., 1964, Apparatus Notes: "Mu Meson Lifetime." Am. J. Phys. 32 (October).

Dyson, Freeman, 1979, Disturbing the Universe. Harper & Row, N.Y..

Fackler, O., and Vân, J. Trân Tranh, 1986, editors, '86 Massive Neutrinos in Astrophysics and in Particle Physics. Moriond Workshop 6, as reviewed by Wolfenstein, 1987.

Feinberg, Gerald, 1978, What is the World Made of? Atoms, Leptons, Quarks and Other Tantalizing Particles. Anchor Press/Doubleday, Garden City.

Feynman, Richard P., Leighton, Robert B., and Sands, Matthew, 1965, The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Vols. I-III; Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., Reading, Massachusetts; Vol. III, ch 2, pages 2-4, and 2-5.

Fisher, Leon H. and Varney, Robert N., 1976, "Contact potentials between metals: History, concepts, and persistent misconceptions." Am. J. Phys. 44 pages 464-475.

Ford, K. W., 1974, Classical and Modern Physics, Vol 3. John Wiley and Sons (New York); chapter 23; muons: p. 1366-67; decay chains: p. 1327-1330.

Frisch, D. H. and Smith, J. H., 1963, "Measurement of the Relativistic Time Dilation Using 1Mesons." AJP 31, p. 342.

Glasser, O., Medical Physics, Vol. II, as cited by Cember, 1969, p. 159.

Goldman, David T., and Bell, R. J., editors, 1981, The International System of Units (SI).

Good, R. H., 1976, "Approximate treatment of experimental error." Am. J. Phys. 44, p. 1011-12. In our terminology, Good suggests routinely approximating s_f by the largest of the d_a values and notes the value for experimenters of concentrating attention on the most important source of uncertainty in the result.

Gräslund, A., Ehrenberg, A., and Rupprecht, A., 1973, "Ionic Free Radicals Induced by Ionizing Radiation in Oriented DNA." Annals of New York Acad. Sci. 222, p. 374-386; uses esr; see various other articles in that same volume.

Greenberg, Leonard H., 1975, Physics for biology and pre-med students. W. B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia. p. 537-42 re: photomultiplier tubes.

Hainsfeld, James F., 1987, "A Small Gold-Conjugated Antibody Label: Improved Resolution for Electron Microscopy." Science 236 pp. 450-453.

Hall, H. A. and Tuttle, R. P., 1971, "Photoelectric Effect and Planck's Constant in the Introductory Laboratory." Am. J. Phys. 39, p. 50.

Halliday, David, and Resnick, Robert, 1981, Fundamentals of Physics, Second Ed., Extended Version. John Wiley & Sons, New York.

Handbook of Chemistry and Physics: see Weast.

Heald, Mark A., 1992, "Uncertainty of the slope for highly correlated data." Am. J. Phys. 60, p. 11 (a letter to the editor).

Herbert, Sarah, M. and Tolbert, Bert M., 1976, "Chemical and Conformational Studies of Gamma-Irradiated Solid Lysozyme." Radiation Research 65, p. 268-282; non x-ray demonstration of changes at doses leaving 94% of native activity remaining.

Higbie, J., 1976, "Uncertainty in the measured width of a random distribution." Am. J. Phys. 44, p. 706-707.

Higbie, Jack, 1991, "Uncertainty in the linear regression slope." Am. J. Phys. 59, p. 184-185, as cited by Heald, 1992.

Hubbard, Lynn M., 1989, "Book Review." Physics Today 42 (4) pp. 72-74 (April issue). A review of Nazeroff and Nero, 1988, Bodansky, et al, 1987, and Cothern and Smith, 1987.

International Tables for X-ray Crystallography: see Karle, 1973.

Jackson, J. David, 1987, "The impact of special relativity on theoretical physics." Physics Today 40 no. 5, May, 1987, pp. 34-42. See especially note 15, which cites two papers by E. J. Williams and one by C. F. von Weizsäcker.

Jenkins, Francis A., and White, Harvey E., 1976, Fundamentals of Optics, Fourth Edition. McGraw-Hill, N.Y., pages 200-02, 205-07, and 602-04, in particular.

Judson, Horace Freeland, 1979, The Eighth Day of Creation. Simon and Schuster (New York).

Kachar, Bechara, 1985, "Asymmetric Illumination Contrast: A Method of Image Formation for Video Light Microscopy." Science 227 pages 766-768.

Karle, J., 1973, International Tables for X-ray Crystallography. Published for the IUC by Kynoch Press, Birmingham, England.

Karle, Jerome, 1989, "Macromolecular Structure from Anomalous Dispersion." Physics Today 42 (6) pp. 22-29.

Kasche, V., Lundquist, H., Bergman, R., and Axen, R., 1971, "A theoretical model describing steady-state catalysis by enzymes immobilized in spherical gel particles. Experimental study of ÿ-Chymotrypsin-Sepharose." Biochem. Biophys. Res. Comm. 45, p. 615-621; as cited by Kasche.

Kasche, Volker, 1973, "Effects of the microenvironment of the specific interaction between ÿchymotrypsin and immobilized soybean trypsin inhibitor." Studia biophysica 35, p. 45; as cited by Kasche, 1974.

Kasche, Volker, 1974, "Oxygen Effect: Differences in Radiation-Induced Deactivation of Mobile and Immobilized ÿ-Chymotrypsin." Rad. and Environm. Biophys. 11, p. 189-193.

Kazarian, Ralph, 1986, "Medical X-Rays and Astronomical Plates." Mercury July-August 1986 issue, page 126.

Kidd, Richard, Ardini, James, and Anton, Anatol, 1989, "Evolution of the modern photon." Am. J. Phys. 57 p. 27-35.

Kim, S. K., and Strait, E. N., 1978, Modern Physics for Scientists and Engineers. MacMillan (New York); chapter 4.

Kino, Gordon S., and Corle, Timothy R., 1989, "Confocal Scanning Optical Microscopy." Physics Today 42 (9), 55-62.

Kinsella, A., 1986, "Numerical methods for error evaluation." Am. J. Phys. 54, pp. 464-6; (table II was corrected in an erratum published in Am. J. Phys. 54, p. 951). An intriguing "dual" to the all combinations approach, the techniques presented here by Kinsella, "bootstrap" and "jackknife," involve repeated calculation leaving out one measurement at a time. These techniques are particularly robust because of their freedom from assumptions about the error distribution.

Kittel, Charles, 1966, Introduction to Solid State Physics. John Wiley and Sons.

Krane, Kenneth S., 1983, Modern Physics. John Wiley & Sons, New York. See especially Chapter 10 and section 8.5.

Kukolich, S. G., 1968, Am. J. Phys. 36 701, as cited by Woolsey. This appears to be the basis of the electron scattering experiment as an instructional lab exercise.

Kyker, Granvil C., Jr., 1983, "The range of a data set: A quick estimator of the standard deviation." Am. J. Phys. 51, p. 852. For 3 N 12, s = R/, within ± 15%. Kyker argues that "most elementary lab exercises that call for multiple trials do not involve fewer than 3 or more than 12 measurements of a single variable."

Langford-Smith, F., editor, 1952, Radiotron Designer's Handbook, Fourth Edition. RCA (Harrison, N.J.).

Langlois, Richard G., Bigbee, William L., Kyoizumi, Seishi, Nakamura, Nori, Bean, Michael A., Akiyama, Mitoshi, and Jensen, Ronald H., 1987, "Evidence for Increased Somatic Cell Mutations at the Glycophorin A Locus in Atomic Bomb Survivors." Science 236 pp. 445-448.

Lichten, William, 1989, "New graphical methods for linear regression with errors: Unweighted data." Am. J. Phys. 57, 1112-1115.

Macdonald, J. Ross, 1975, "Comment on 'Simple method for fitting data when both variables have uncertainties.'" Am. J. Phys. 43, p. 372-374.

Macdonald, J. Ross, 1992, "Least-squares fitting when both variables contain errors: Pitfalls and possibilities." Am. J. Phys. 60, p. 66-73.

Mark, Jean L., 1988, "Lower Radiation Effect Found." Science 241, p 1286.

Marmier, Pierre, and Sheldon, Eric, 1969, Physics of Nuclei and Particles, Volume I. Academic Press, New York.

McClellan, G., Didwall, E. M., and Rigby, Cornel J., 1978, "Experiments on the photoelectric effect and on the diffusion of electrons in gases." Am. J. Phys. 46 p 832-839.

McPhee, John, 1974, The Curve of Binding Energy. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York.

Mellisinos, Adrian C., 1966, Experiments in Modern Physics. Academic Press, New York. Chapter 1, section 3 is on the Franck-Hertz experiment; see also Fig. 2.13; chapter 1, section 4 is on the photoelectric effect.

Mendenhall, William, 1983, Introduction to Probability and Statistics, Sixth Edition. Buxbury Press, Mass. Chapter 10, section 7, page 370-376, "Inferences Concerning a Population Variance." (In prior editions, this was Chapter 9, section 6.)

Meyers, L. S. Jr., 1973, "Free radical damage of nucleic acids and their components by ionizing radiation." Federation Proceedings 32, p. 1882-1894; sensitization and protection studies with esr.

Millikan, R. A., 1947, Electrons (+ and -), Rev. Ed., Univ. of Chicago Press, p. 237. A summary of the results of the original experiment by Millikan. Also shows diagrams and photographs of the apparatus.

Millikan, R. A., 1916, Physical Review 7, p. 362. Report on the original oil-drop experiment by Millikan.

Nazaroff, William, and Nero, Anthony (editors), 1988, Radon and Its Decay Products in Indoor Air. Wiley, NY. As reviewed in Hubbard, 1989.

Neave, Henry R., 1977, Statistics Tables. George Allen & Unwin, London. The "last gasp" of pre-calculator statistics tables.

Nero, Anthony, 1989, "Earth, Air, Radon and Home." Physics Today 42 (4) pp. 32-39 (April issue).

Nyquist, Harry, 1927, "Thermal agitation in conductors." Phys Rev 29 p. 614 (Abstract of paper 33 presented at the meeting of February 25-26, 1927).

Nyquist, H., 1928a, "Thermal Agitation of electric charge in Conductors." Phys Rev 32 p. 110-113; elaboration of Nyquist, 1927, above.

Nyquist, H., 1928b, "Certain Topics in Telegraph Transmission Theory." Transactions of the AIEE 47 (April) pp 617-644, as cited by Tretter, 1976; this includes the sampling theorem.

Nyquist, H., 1932, "Regeneration Theory." Bell System Technical Journal 11.1, page 126, as cited by Langford-Smith (1952). This presents the analysis of stability vs oscillation in amplifiers with feedback and phase shifts.

Okun, Lev B., 1989, "The Concept of Mass." Physics Today 42 (6) pp. 31-36.

Olsson, Martin G., 1992, Review of Barut, et. al., 1991. American Journal of Physics 60, p. 477.

Piccard, Richard D., 1979, "An X-Ray Crystallographic Investigation of Radiation Damage to Alpha-Chymotrypsin." Ph.D. Dissertation, Princeton University.

Piccard, Richard D., 1989, "A finite difference technique for propagating uncertainty in calculations." Am. J. Phys. 57, 925-930. Presented to the Fall, 1987, meeting of the Michigan section of the American Association of Physics Teachers.

Piccard, Richard D., and Carter, Sue A., 1989, "Using non-exponential absorption to demonstrate that anode X-rays are polychromatic." Am. J. Phys. 57, 931-936. Presented to the Fall, 1987, meeting of the Michigan section of the American Association of Physics Teachers.

Piccard, Richard D., and Vo-Dinh, Tuan, 1991, "A Multi-Optical-Fiber Array with CCD Image Detection for Parallel Processing of Light Signals and Spectra." Review of Scientific Instruments 62, 584-594.

Polkinghorne, J. C., 1979, The Particle Play: an account of the ultimate constituents of matter. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco.

Powell, B. M. and Martel, P. 1977, "UV damage in solids of the nucleic acid bases." Photochemistry and Photobiology 26, p. 305-308; neutron diffraction study.

Press, William H., Flannery, Brian P., Teukolsky, Saul A., and Vetterling, William T., 1988, Numerical Recipes in C The Art of Scientific Computing. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Putnam, Hilary, 1975, "Explanation and Reference." in Mind, Language, and Reality. Philosophical Papers, Vol. II. Cambridge University Press; pp. 196-214; see also "Language and Reality." in the same volume, pp. 272-290. These essays will provide many further references for those interested in persuing the philosophical issues.

Quate, Calvin F., 1986, "Vacuum tunneling: A new technique for microscopy." Physics Today 39 (8) August, 1986, pages 26-33.

Rajnak, Stanley L., 1976, "Introductory Physics Laboratory Data Analysis." Kalamazoo College, unpublished. Includes a general discussion roughly comparable to sections A through D of Chapter II.

REAC/TS, 1987, "Program Update: DTPA Chelation Drugs." REAC/TS Newsletter. Winter / Spring 1987. Published by the Radiation Emergency Assistance Center / Training Site operated by the Oak Ridge Associated Universities.

Reed, B. Cameron, 1989, "Linear least-squares fits with error in both coordinates." Am. J. Phys., 57, p. 642-646.

Reed, B. Cameron, 1992, "Linear least-squares fits with error in both coordinates. II: Comments on parameter variances." Am. J. Phys., 60, p. 59-62.

Rhodes, Richard, 1986, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Simon and Schuster, New York.

Rhodes, Richard, 1995, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. Simon and Schuster, New York.

Rotlevi, E., Moss, H. M., Kominami, S., and Riesz, R., 1973, "Effects of Metal Ions on Radical Formation in a-Irradiated DNA in the Solid State." Annals of N. Y. A. S. 222, p. 387-410.

Rudnick, J. and Tannhauser, D. S., 1976, "Concerning a widespread error in the description of the photoelectric effect." Am. J. Phys. 44 p. 796. This paper directly inspired Chapter IV, part B, section 3 of these notes.

Sagan, Leonard A., 1989, "On Radiation, Raradigms, and Hormesis." Science 245, pp 574,621.

Segre, Emilio, 1980, From X-Rays to Quarks: Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco.

Shurtleff, Richard and Derringh, Edward, 1989, "The most tightly bound nucleus." Am J. Phys. 57 (6) p. 552. They use the "semi-empirical mass formula" to calculate the binding energies and then comment on the synthetic pathways.

Silverman, M. P., and Strange, W., 2004, "The distribution of composite measurements: How to be certain of the uncertainties in what we measure." Am J. Phys. 72 (8) p. 1068-1081. They demonstrate that the distribution of a result calculated from multiple measured variables can be different from the distributions of the individual measurements.

Socolow, R., 1987, "Radon: Is There a Physicist in the House?" Presented at A Symposium in Honor of Professor George T. Reynolds' 70th Birthday, May 22, 1987, Princeton University.

Sproull, R. L., and Phillips, W. A., 1980, Modern Physics, Third Ed. John Wiley and Sons (New York); chapter 3, section 9.

Stong, C. L., 1968, "Two methods of microscope lighting that produce color." (Amateur Scientist column) Scientific American April issue, page 124. Discusses Kohler and Rheinberg illumination.

Stout, G. H. and L. H. Jensen, 1989, X-Ray Structure Determination: A Practical Guide. New York, John Wiley & Sons.

Stranathan, Particles of Modern Physics. An old text that shows a diagram of Millikan's original "Machine Shop in a Vacuum."

Strong, John, 1958, Concepts of Classical Optics. W. H. Freeman and Co., San Francisco. Appendix K is "The Wave Theory of Microscopic Image Formation." by F. Zernike (Nobel for Phase Contrast Microscope)!

Stuewer, Roger, 1975, The Compton Effect, as cited by Martin J. Klein in his review of Wheaton, 1983; Science 224 p 277.

Suess and Urey, 1956, (a 21 page article in RMP on the relative abundances of the elements).

Taylor, Edwin F. and Wheeler, John Archibald, 1966, Spacetime Physics. W. H. Freeman, San Francisco.

Taylor, John Robert, 1982, An Introduction to Error Analysis: The Study of Uncertainties in Physical Measurements. University Science Books, Mill Valley, CA. Chapter 3 is on propagation of error; chapter 5 provides a proof of our Eq. (14).

Taylor, John R., 1985, "Simple examples of correlations in error propagation." Am. J. Phys. 53, p. 663-667. The analysis of bubble chamber photographs of the decay of K mesons and the estimation of uncertainty in predictions from least squares fit coefficients are two situations in which correlations of errors must not be ignored.

TELTRON, 1974, Student Enquiry Series D: The Production, Properties, and Uses of X-rays. TELTRON Ltd., London, England. The manual for the Tel-X-Ometer apparatus.

Titus, William J., 1987, "A numerical alternative to the traditional treatment of the propagation of uncertainty." Am. J. Phys. 55 (6), pages 520-522.

Toohey, Richard E., 1987, "Radon vs lung cancer: New study weighs the risks." Logos 5 (1) Spring, 1987, pp. 7-11. Argonne National Laboratory.

Tretter, Steven A., 1976, Introduction to Discrete-Time Signal Processing. Wiley, NY.

Tufte, Edward R., 1983, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, CT, Graphics Press.

Walker, F. William, Kirouac, George J., and Rourke, Francis M., 1977, "Chart of the Nuclides." General Electric's Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory for many years published a compendium of data about various isotopes in chart form. The layout inspired the chart presented as Fig. 2 in Chapter I, but the data for that figure were collected elsewhere, as described in the caption.

Walker, Jearl, 1979, "How to Make Dazzling Photomicrographs with Simple and Inexpensive Equipment." (Amateur Scientist column) Scientific American January issue, page 152. Darkfield microscopy and polarized light.

Weast, Robert C., editor, 1982, The CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 63rd Ed. See p. F-230 for muon lifetime.

Weidner, R. T., and Sells, R. L., 1980, Elementary Modern Physics, Third Edition. Allyn and Bacon (Boston); Chapter 4, section 2, pp. 89-99; chapter 5.

Weinberg, Steven, 1977, The First Three Minutes. Bantam Books, New York.

Wheaton, Bruce R., 1983, The Tiger and the Shark. Empirical Roots of Wave-Particle Dualism. Cambridge University Press, New York. Reviewed in Science 224 p 277.

Wilson, E. Bright Jr., 1952, An Introduction to Scientific Research. McGraw-Hill, New York. Section 9.11 is "Compounding of errors." Covers experimental and analytical techniques. Impressively useful today, especially considering when it was written.

Wolfenstein, Lincoln, 1987, "Neutrino Mass." Science 236, pp. 341-2, a review of Fackler and Vân, 1986.

Wolff, Sheldon, 1989, "Are Radiation-Induced Effects Hormetic?" Science 245, pp 575, 621.

Woolfson, M. M., 1970, An Introduction to X-ray Crystallography. Cambridge University Press.

Woolsey, G. A., 1971, "An Extension of the Ramsauer-Townsend Experiment in a Xenon Thyratron." Am. J. Phys. 39 p. 558-560.

Yearian, Mason R., 1992, "Robert Hofstadter." (An obituary.) Physics Today 45 (5), p. 73-74.

Dick Piccard revised this file (https://people.ohio.edu/piccard/radnotes/references.html) on April 6, 2013.

Please E-mail comments or suggestions to piccard@ohio.edu.