The purpose of this experiment is to familiarize the student with the Geiger-Mueller counter. This counter is a widely used pulse-counting instrument that uses gas amplification, which makes it remarkably sensitive, but whose simple construction makes it relatively inexpensive.  The experiments that are designed to accomplish this purpose deal with the operating plateau of the Geiger tube, half-life determinations, resolving-time corrections, and the basic nuclear considerations involved.

This document is part of Ortec's AN34 Publication, a collection of nuclear physics experiments for undergraduate laboratories.