International Journal of Physical Sciences Vol. 4 (10), pp. 588-591, October 2009 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/IJPS ISSN 1992 - 1950 © 2009 Academic Journals Full Length Research Paper Investigation of photon attenuation coefficient for pumice I. Akkurt 1 *, S.Kılıncarslan 2 , C. Basyigit 2 , B. Mavi 1 and H. Akyıldırım 1 1 Physics Department, Science Faculty, Suleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey. 2 Structural Education Department, Technical Education Faculty, Suleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey. Accepted 06 August, 2009 With the rapid development in technology, the radiation protection has become one of the most important part of building construction. As shielding is the basic method for radiation protection, besides the physical and mechanical properties of materials used in building construction, the radiation shielding properties should also be known. In this study, the linear attenuation coefficients of two different types of Golcuk-Isparta pumice which is an alternative building material have been measured and the results were compared with the calculation and some other materials. Key words: Pumice, γ-ray shielding, attenuation coefficients. INTRODUCTION Building materials are important in building construction for both in durability and to carry architectural culture to next generation. For this reason, instead of using single type of building materials, mixture of them is more useful. This can cause a number of problems such as me- chanical deformation, thermal and voice conductivity. The pumice formed after volcanic event, is cavity, spongy, porous and light building material. As the inferred reserve of pumice high in Turkey, it becomes important materials in engineering sectors. About 80% of produced pumice is used in construction sector as light block elements and isolation materials (Erkoyun, 2005). Besides being one of the most common building materials it can also be used as an architectural covering stones in many engineering structures. Because of this, it became vital to investigate its response to radiation, heating and cooling, and also it’s thermal and voice conductivity properties. Properties like having lower unit weight than normal concrete and also high performance on thermal and voice conductivity make it ideal choice in building construction. Besides using it in natural form, it can be used in compressed form as a decorative wall cladding material (Davraz et al., 1997). The photon attenuation coefficients of such an important material should be determined by testing the *Corresponding author. E-mail: iskender@fef.sdu.edu.tr. Tel: +90 246 211 4033. Fax: +90 246 2371106. should be determined by testing the materials for radiation shielding. It is important in radiation physics and radiation dosimeter as it measures the probability of all possible interactions between photon and atomic medium. The magnitude of linear attenuation coefficient depends on the incident photon energy, the atomic number and the density (ρ) of the shielding materials (Woods, 1982). A number of experimental and theoretical works have been performed on the linear attenuation coefficients for different types of materials such as marble, barite and limra (Akkurt et al., 2004), some kind of rocks (Özkahraman, 2004) and also concrete (Akkurt et al., 2005; Bashter, 1997) which is commonly used materials in building construction. In this paper, the linear attenuation coefficients of pumice will be presented for two different forms and then will be compared with the calculation and some other materials. MATERIALS AND METHODS The pumice used in this study was obtained from Isparta- Gölcük region where its inferred reserve is about 2.5 billion m 3 (Davraz 2005; Gündüz, 1998). Both natural (NatPum) and powder pumice were casted 5 × 5 × 2 cm in sizes. The powder pumice was compressed (CompPum) in a metal mould. The density of powder and natural pumice became 1.69 and 0.787 g cm -3 respectively. The linear attenuation coefficients (μ) were obtained via mass attenuation coefficients μ/ρ calculated using the XCOM code at