Question

In the context of Particle acceleration and detection, what is specific energy loss, dE/dx, and how does one go about calculating it?

Answer 1

Look up the Bethe-Bloch formula. Here's Wikipedia's entry on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethe_formula

Answer 2

Is there any formula that is simpler than this? This looks like the right thing but the equation doesn't look familiar at all.

Answer 3

Did you look at the equation for low energies, i.e. where β=v/c<<1? The equations are pretty straightforward, although maybe not compact.