The typical detector segment is a piece of scintillating material, which emits light when a particle passes through it. The scintillation light can be converted to an electrical signal either by a photomultiplier tube (PMT) or a PIN diode. If a segment measures some significant amount of light, the experimenter can infer that a particle passed through that segment. In addition to coordinate information, for some systems the strength of the light can be proportional to the deposited energy. By doing necessary calibrations, the deposited energy can be determined, which then can be used to infer information about the original particle's energy.