Senses alone cannot detect different properties

摘要

Organic scintillation materials, aromatic ring polymers doped with various fluorescent guest molecules, emit light when they are exposed to radiation [1–3]. They have been used in radiation detectors for more than 70 years [4, 5]. Recently, we demonstrated that even an ordinary plastic bottle emits light when irradiated. This drew global attention to the potential application of common plastics as alternative organic scintillation materials in radiation detectors [6]. However, the quality of the plastic determines the performance of the radiation detector [7, 8]. Here we demonstrate through simple experiments the importance of the quality assessment of a plastic material in accordance with its intended use.