Question
A particle of ionizing radiation creates 4000 ion pairs in the gas inside a Geiger tube as it passes through. What minimum energy was deposited, if 30.0 eV is required to create each ion pair?
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Final Answer

120 keV120\textrm{ keV}

Solution video

OpenStax College Physics, Chapter 31, Problem 2 (Problems & Exercises)

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Video Transcript
This is College Physics Answers with Shaun Dychko. A particle of ionizing radiation creates 4000 ion pairs in a Geiger tube, what minimum energy is deposited if 30.0 electron volts is required to create each pair? So we multiply the number of pairs by the energy per pair, the pairs cancel and we are left with energy in electron volts but I made it kiloelectron volts because this is 120000 electron volts when you multiply 4000 by 30.