The total radiant flux from a solution containing a radioactive compound, hexadecane-1-C14, plus an appropriate scintillator has been determined. The procedure used involves comparison of its luminescent emission with the light scattered by glycogen illuminated with a monochromatic homogeneous light beam of known photon flux. From the result obtained the scintillation quantum yield of β− disintegration from carbon 14 has been determined to be 793 photons; thus 5.25% of the energy appears as light.
Hastings et al. (Sun,) studied this question.