disintegration per minute

A disintegration per minute is exactly 1/60 becquerel. Liquid scintillation counting reports in dpm, because a counter measures counts per minute and divides by the detection efficiency to get dpm; the whole workflow of tritium and carbon-14 work is built on the unit.

Watch out: Counts per minute is NOT disintegrations per minute and is not a unit of activity at all: it depends on the detector, the geometry and the quench in the sample. Only after dividing by a measured efficiency does cpm become dpm. A tritium sample counted at 40% efficiency reads 400 cpm for 1000 dpm.

• Radioactive Activity (A = λN)

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