collimator
Sign in to savethumb|300px|Example of a particle collimator A collimator is a device which narrows a beam of particles or waves. “To narrow” can mean either to cause the directions of motion to become more aligned in a specific direction (i.e., make collimated light or parallel rays), or to cause the spatial cross section of the beam to become smaller (beam limiting device).
Article
9 sectionsContents
- History
- Optical collimators
- X-ray, gamma ray, and neutron collimators
- Applications
- Limitations
- In radiation therapy
- Computing the spatial resolution
- See also
- References
thumb|300px|Example of a particle collimator A collimator is a device which narrows a beam of particles or waves. “To narrow” can mean either to cause the directions of motion to become more aligned in a specific direction (i.e., make collimated light or parallel rays), or to cause the spatial cross section of the beam to become smaller (beam limiting device).
==History== The English physicist Henry Kater was the inventor of the floating collimator, which rendered a great service to practical astronomy. He reported about his invention in January 1825. In his report, Kater mentioned previous work in this area by Carl Friedrich Gauss and Friedrich Bessel.