Physics reference

ScienceShot

Physics calculators

Free calculators for radiation, particles and detectors. Each one runs on public reference data, shows its method and gives a result you can cite. The examples below are computed by the same code.

8 instruments, each with a worked example

Energy-loss calculator

Particle, material and thickness in; mean loss, most probable value and straggling out.

Worked example

A 100 MeV proton in water

Stopping power 7.29 MeV cm²/g, CSDA range 7.71 g/cm²

Bethe and LandauOpen tool

Radioactive decay calculator

Calculate decay and daughter activity.

Worked example

1 GBq of Mo-99 at time zero

Tc-99m activity peaks after 22.8 h

NNDC NuDat 3Open tool

Materials library

Search and compare density, excitation energy and radiation properties for 17 materials.

Worked example

Silicon

Density 2.329 g/cm³, radiation length 9.37 cm

PDG and NISTOpen library

Accelerator power and synchrotron loss calculator

Calculate dipole radiation for one beam in an isomagnetic ring.

Worked example

LEP2: 104.5 GeV electrons on a 3,096 m bending radius

Energy lost per turn 3.41 GeV, critical photon energy 818 keV

CODATA 2018; Sands SLAC-121Open tool

Gamma dose rate calculator

Calculate air kerma from an isotropic point gamma source: K̇ = Γδ A / d², with optional shielding.

Worked example

1 GBq of Co-60 at 1 m, no shielding

Air kerma rate 0.306 mGy/h

NNDC; NIST; LNHBOpen tool

Radiation units converter

Convert activity, dose, exposure and energy units.

Worked example

One curie in becquerels

1 Ci = 37 GBq

BIPM, NIST and ICRPOpen tool

Photon attenuation calculator

Half-value layer and transmission for gamma and X-ray beams through common materials.

Worked example

662 keV gammas (Cs-137) through 10 mm of lead

Transmission 28.6 %, half-value layer 5.54 mm

NIST XCOMOpen tool

Detector signal calculator

Electron-hole pairs and fully collected charge in silicon and germanium.

Worked example

A 3 GeV/c muon through 300 µm of silicon

Most probable signal 22,568 electron-hole pairs (3.62 fC)

PDG; NIST ESTARCalculate