Liquid Scintillation

A liquid scintillation experiment measures the radioactivity of a sample.

Usually, because the precise amount of radioactivity of a sample can be hard to detect and measure accurately, the sample will be mixed with a scintillation mix (or scintillation cocktail). This scintillation cocktail contains "scintillators" or "fluors", excitable molecules which will emit photons upon receiving radiations from the radioactive compounds.

Using a liquid scintillation counter, the amount of photons emitted can be much more easily detected and measured, giving an indirect measure of the concentration of the radioactive compound in the sample.