SIMU-RAD programme: a learning tool for radiation (photons and charged particles) interaction

Abstract

Abstract Radiation education is necessary for a wide variety of people, such as radiation workers particularly for students of secondary school and higher education institution who learn radiation sciences. The fact that we could not see or feel radiation makes it difficult to understand it. The use of radiation trajectories shown on a personal computer should be useful to overcome this difficulty. In order to understand radiation behaviour inside the material, we have developed a Simu-Rad (Copyright: LY2018002738) by using Monte Carlo simulation programme. One who has no programming knowledge is able to simulate photons in a material through the developed programme. The program could become a computer aided learning tool for radiation related courses. We aim to facilitate lecturer from ‘The Traditional Classroom’ to ‘The Flipped Classroom’ for radiation education concerning in the era of IR 4.0. To validate our radiation simulator, we calculate photon linear attenuation coefficient (µ) of an aluminium material which commonly used as a filter in diagnostic radiology. µ is one of the main characteristics to understand how the radiation attenuated inside the materials. We calculate at energy photon of 662 keV (Cs-137 radiation source) to compare our results of µ with the XCOM database. Consequently, the results from the developed simulator comparable with the database verified our programme to be used for radiation study.