Investigation of some radiation interaction parameters for bacteria isolated from the soil in the low energy region

Abstract

The purpose of this work, investigation of radiation attenuation characteristics, such as mass attenuation coefficient (μ/ρ), molar extinction coefficient (ε), effective atomic number (Zeff), and electron density (NE), of isolated bacteria from soil samples taken from Diyarbakır in Turkey. The experiments were performed using a narrow beam geometry with the help of the a high-resolution Si(Li) detector and three different radioactive sources at 15 different photon energies. The ε, Zeff, and NE values for some bacteria isolated from soil, such as Bacillus megaterium, Bacillus simplex, Bacillus subtilis, and commercially purchased Geobacillus stearothermophilus bacterium, were obtained from the measured μ/ρ results in the energy range from 13.94 to 88.04 keV. The experimental values were checked with two different theoretical results and good agreement was observed among them. The results show that Bacillus simplex bacterium has the highest values of μ/ρ and Zeff and Bacillus subtilis bacterium has the biggest values of ε and NE among the present bacteria.