NUCLEAR PHOTOGRAPHIC EMULSION

also called Nuclear Emulsion, radiation detector generally in the form of a glass plate thinly coated with a transparent medium containing a silver halide compound. Passage of charged subatomic particles is recorded in the emulsion in the same way that ordinary black and white photographic film records a picture. After photographic developing, a permanent record of the paths of the charged particles remains and may be observed through a microscope. Nuclear emulsions are used especially in cosmic-ray research and in high-energy particle physics for counting the number of particles in a beam of radiation and for identifying the kind and energy of charged particles, especially those resulting from nuclear reactions involving atomic nuclei of the emulsion itself. Radioactivity was discovered in 1896 by its effect on a photographic plate.