Today's aparatus (above). Chamber is larger and I left the bottom sealed. It sits directly atop a chunk of dry ice. The spongeat the top is soaked in alcohol.
This is a one minute clip. It does seem a bit like watching paint dry, but you will see many atomic particles moving through the cloud. If you look to the right side of the screen you will see that the cloud has started to rain alcohol. I will put additional clips on the Patreon site.
Harry Cliff's wonderful book mentions the origins of the cloud chamber.
Click for a better view.
Click for a better view/
Here's an interesing site on cloud chambers:
And here's another one:
I think that is all I will do on the cloud chambers. This was a lot of fun, but I am running out of dry ice. There is, however, a lot of room for improvement and experimentation here, and a project likes this puts you in touch with the earliest days of particle physics (as Harry Cliff explains above). Good luck on 1.22 nanometers! Please let us know how you do.
Here is one more look at the "output" of my cloud chamber. This is a ten minute video. You can see many traces in this. Check it out:
Thank you Charles Wilson. And thank you C.L. Stong.
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When you are done with "Three-Body Problem" on Netflix, or should you decide to read the original book version (great!), then for a little particle physics pick up this bio at your library or Amazon: "A Force of Nature, The Frontier Genius of Ernest Rutherford" by Richard Reeves. It's a well-written, quick read at just over 200 pages.
ReplyDeleteThanks Mike. I alreadt read the English translation (the one that had the cultural revolution trial as the opening scene). As usual, it was better than the video version. 73 Bill
ReplyDeleteJust a few weeks ago, my daughter handed me the book, said "read", while watching my reaction as I read the first 3 pages. All I could say was "Well, you know the world ain't all cotton candy and unicorns".
ReplyDelete