I could sit all day long to watch this and listen to the music, while thinking about our universe, everything in and around us made from these particles, which constantly wiggle and fly around. This complexity and beauty, so unbelievable. 🌌
Fist cloud chamber video I've seen. It took me almost 1,5 hours to read and understand what I'm looking at. I tried and I failed again and again as I just found myself staring the chamber like in hypnosis. This works better than staring at fire! Thank you for this magnificent video.
I am blown away how you can see particles from cosmic background. Years of college and I'm just now discovering cloud chambers. I could stare at them for hours! 😮😮😮 And these are DIY?! You sir are amazing! 👏👏👏
Can make them without dry ice or liquid nitrogen too. There are actually several cheap, easy methods. I believe a super easy cheap one could be made for a few dollars with ultrasonic foggers/misters (for example). There are many designs that haven't been invented yet too. If you take the time you might be able to invent one yourself.
Right? I remember learning about this. It's nothing like watching it happen. Seriously I think every physics class should see this demonstration, you'd suddenly have an explosion of people getting physics degrees.
@@deucedeuce1572 Would a fog machine or nebulizer even work? My understanding is it's the (invisible) gas vapors which are condensing to form a trail of droplets (fog).
When I nod off in bed , amongst the brain noise I do see the odd sparkle flash - a cosmic particle hitting my retina. It's OK I ain't the only one to see it lol.
nice to see you're back, such an interesting phenomenon to be able to visualize. ever consider super high speed photo microscopy? maybe a collaboration with the 'slo mo guys' or any phantom cam operator. would love to see whats going on on an even more detailed scale. love the work, thanks
Congratulations ! It's a very remarkable work. I made a little expansion cloud chamber in 1986, after Chernobyl disaster. That works very well, but I would like to make a diffusion cloud chamber like your, the diffusion chamber is another thing. I hope to live enough to can do that, because now I am a little old. Congratulations again ! Thank you very much.
What can be "nucleation" in real physical manner ? Ethanol break down to CO2+H20 or pure Carbon and H20 temporarily and than combine again to Ethanol? Or it convert into another chemical compound?
I'm talking about this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleation. It's the ions made by charged particles who act as nucleations sites. Ethanol remain ethanol in all the process. You can break ethanol only if you burnt it, which is not the case in this experiment.
is it possible to put a laser going through the cloud a week single beam and see if you can capture photons moving off of it or any effect it might have the lights in the devise seem to make some effect
I have made the typically tedious pettier cooled stack with a puny viewing area - it worked but seeing one like in a physics university of a friend of mine is amazing - awesome work!!!!!!
Very nice video and cool build. You have inspired me to build one myself also using phase change cooling. Can you tell me more about your evaporator or share a photo? is it the full size of the cooling plate? What are your thoughts about using a transparent film for heating the glass? Would heating the glass in this way be enough heat to heat the alcohol as well?
The analogy is the trail left by a jet, which I find a little strange since the jet is following a path decided on by the pilot. The trails left by the particles seem rather random to me and I find it difficult to believe that the particles have any choice in the direction they are taking. It make me think of the erratic paths of lightning strikes. They do not take the straight path to the closest earth location either, so something is preventing them from doing that. Right?
I am nominating you for the C.L. Stong Memorial Award. Back in the day, he wrote the "Amateur Scientist" for Scientific American magazine -- and I very well remember his cloud chamber project. A lot of sheet copper bending and brazing, plus a monstrous homemade electromagnet . . . big progress since then in materials and technology! Maybe the only thing more easily available back then was a radiation source -- you could still find a wristwatch that sported original glow-in-the-dark (radium-painted) numerals!
I wish my physics prof would have done this experiment for us. Makes it soooo much more real. You should sell these as a kit. Do a survey among students who wants to be a physicist before and after, I bet you'll see the results increase by a magnitude. Publish it, and you'll sell 1000s.
If 220 Radon is almost completely decayed within ten minutes (20:33), then where does this researcher get the Radon 220 from? Do they make it in the lab and use it immediately after?
Very cool! I was surprised that the magnetic field wasn't more obvious. It's so chaotic, I could make up any theory I wanted. S shapes don't make sense to me. I get that there are predominant conditions based on massive quantities of observations, but I have never been sold on what a crowd thinks. This was great though. Thanks.
Glad to see your last prototype is working perfectly. Is there any way to purchase a cloud chamber ? It's a great experiment to display in museums and universities.
Can anyone explain the details of how a positron (antimatter) would leave a condensation trail? Shouldn't it mutually annihilate the first electron it encounters, I guess combining to produce a photon of appropriate energy? One event was labeled as a gamma (photon) creating an electron + positron pair, with them curving away from each other in opposite directions in the presence of the magnetic field. That makes some sense to me in a vacuum, but not in a densely filled chamber with a super saturated gas condensing in their wake.
Hi Wildcard. Remember that matter is vacuum. It's very unlikely that a moving positon can make a perfect ("head-on") collision with an electron and annihilate. If the positon is not thermalized (this mean the kinetic energy is about 0,025 eV), the probability of this interaction is very very low. But a positon can make a physical collision with an electron during it's flight in matter. This picture show this : www.cloudylabs.fr/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/collision-positon-electron-head-on.png In the left picture, the positon is coming upright and is deflected by a magnetic field to right. At mid flight, there is a little burst of ionisation. That's where the positon made a "nearly" perfect collision with an electron, giving to him nearly all its kinetic energy. The electron of opposite charge, is then deflected towards left. The positon made the little burst of ionisation in the mid flight with the kinetic energy left, and because it give most of it's energy to the electron, it becomes thermalized and then annihilated with an electron or made a positronium state. If the collision was perfect, (Head -on) yes you can have an annihilation process even if the positron is not thermalized. But this is rare, because most of the physical collisions give the result of the left picture : a transfert of almost all the kinetic energy of the incoming positon to an electron. Picture at right is a positon ejecting 2 electrons at the same time. The positon bounce a little during the process and follow it's way (deflected to right by the magnetic field)
@@Cloudylabs Thank you! It does help to visualize the condensation trails as perturbation of neighboring particles, and not collisions, as they travel through mostly empty space.
Would a gamma ray source, say from an old Xray tube, or a magnetron from a microwave oven produce similar/different effects? curious as to the lineratety of those rays - are the straight like an arrow, or do they also curve & wander a bit? Lastly is there a way to calculate the speed of these emissions? They dont appear to be anywhere near lightspeed, do they? Awesome setup man!! super interesting for sure.
How do you like this machine vs your peltier device? I want to build two, one as a gift. I want to make the best, most reliable and impressive results with minimum care or expertise. I think thermoelectric is inefficient but may be more reliable long term with no moving parts. Great videos. You need to collaborate with slowmo guys.
Very interesting. So the design is something akin to an antigriddle paired with a powerful Nd magnet, and a glass chamber of alcohol vapor ? Watched the whole vid - very infomative. 👍
That got me thinking. Alpha particles called Alpha simply because it's the most obvious thing you see in the cloud chamber, so they were just described first?
Another excellent build. Thank you for sharing these videos! I have two questions: 1) How often do you see e+ e- pair production in your cloud chambers? Are they created purely from the background gamma radiation or do you use any radioactive sources to create them at a higher rate? In that case what gamma source did you use? 2) How do you think we are able to see the direction of the particles' motion? Most of the time, the tracks seem to appear in a certain direction and disappear in the opposite direction. These particles have energies in the MeV range so they are moving at a good fraction of the speed of light. If we assume they slow down at a constant rate, we shouldn’t be able to notice any direction until the very last moment they come to a stop. For practical purposes, the nucleation sites due to an incoming high energy charged particle would form in the chamber instantaneously. So I don’t understand why the tracks seem to appear in a certain direction, and why they don’t form equally on these ionized regions.
Hi, 1) to create pair of e+,e-, you need at least a gamma of 1,022 MeV of energy. But the probability of gamma to create a pair at this energy is infinitesimal (1,8x10-5cm²/g). You need higher energy, above 2 MeV to have a decent probability of interaction. At 2 MeV the probability is about 1x10-3 cm²/g. So you need high energy gamma emitter to hope to see pair creation. Uraninite minerals can, with the daughter nucleus like 214 Bi and 210 Tl (gamma above 2,3 MeV). But the best source is of course the natural background. 2) You can suppose the direction of motion by looking at the angle of the delta rays if the particle don't stop in the chamber. www.cloudylabs.fr/wp/dedx/. You can also use a magnetic field. The particle will be more deflected at the end of trajectory in the chamber, rather in the beginning. If the particle does more bouncing versus another part of its trajectory, then the boucing region is where it's kinetic energy is the tiniest, so the end of its trajectory. As kinetic energy decrease, the particle get more deflected by the electrostatics cloud of nucleus.
@@Cloudylabs Hi, thank you very much for your response. Here are a few follow-up comments: 1) Do you recall how often you see an e+ e- pair production event? Was the one you show in your video just a lucky accident or does it happen very often (once every min or once every few mins for example?) 2) I am aware of those methods to determine the direction of the propagation. But it looks to me that you can directly do it from the video itself. If you go to for example the 7:25 mark of your video and slow it down to 0.25x speed, you can clearly see the propagation direction of the tracks produced by the radioactive source, or the other tracks due to the background radiation. But if these particles are moving at a fraction of the speed of light, we shouldn’t be able to tell at this frame rate which direction they move. If you consider a straight track for example, it should just form all at once at every point that makes the track, but some of the tracks clearly appear from one end to the other. I was wondering if you had an explanation for that.
@@couplingconstant 1) I started the video at 14:00 to check if there was more pairs in the next 30 seconds. 14:06 it seems that there is 2 directions of motion. The particules are slighly influenced by the magnetic field. 2 particles = a pair 14:09 Same explanation than 15:42 14:10, the "V" in the middle right (high energy pair because no deviation by the magnetic field) 15:42 very likely a pair. Because if it was an electron coming from top, collisionning with a nucleus to become almost backscattered the electron would have lost most of its energy and thus make a nice curve with the magnetic field, but this is not the case, the curve observed have a high radius of curvature. 14:19 : same as 14:10 14:22 not a pair but interesting. An incoming high energy electron coming from top, undergo a hard collision with an atomic electron and expect a huge loss of its energy, about half. The rest of energy goes to the collisionned atomic electron. The 2 particules have nearly the same energy because the 2 radius of curvature are nearly the same. 14:31 : the direction of motion of one particule (to right) say that this is a positon, so the whole event is a pair. 14:32 : same as 14:10 14:35 : sale as 14:31, but the electron is not present. So in 30 seconds, we have observed about 8 positon. I posted the picture here : www.cloudylabs.fr/wp/some-pair-or-positons/ 2) It's an illusion. That's right, particles create ions "instantaneously" because of their high speed. Sometimes it seems that a track emerge from a point and terminate to another if you slow the video. But this is an illusion because you have to remember that particles dont necessarily travel in the same plan where the supersaturated layer is. So, if they are moving slightly upward or downward from this plan, you have some ions which are not from the same distance of the supersaturated layer. The electric field will move the nearest ions towards the supersaturated layer and the condensation start (the 'beginning of the track'). This is followed by the farthest ions which have traveled a bit to reach the supersaturated layer. So we have the impression that a track seems to start and finish but this is not the case. If a particle travelled right into the supersaturated layer, then you have an instantaneous condensation on all the ions. That's was a good question
@@Cloudylabs Thank you for your response. 1) This is a great collection of events. I am quite surprised that the rate is so high. I wish there was a software which could label these events from the video, it would open up lots of possibilities to do some interesting science at home. With machine learning libraries becoming more and more powerful everyday, I wonder if it would be too difficult to write such a classifier. That would be an interesting side project to think about. 2) Actually that’s exactly what I was thinking that might be happening. I think we can draw a few interesting conclusions from this. The speed of the formation of the tracks should be an indication of the angle between the supersaturated layer and the plane that the charged particles move. This angle would of course affect the length of the tracks as well. According to Alexander Langsdorf’s thesis, the supersaturated region is quite thin, and is slightly above the cold plate. So if a track starts either in the supersatured layer or below, and goes upwards, the apparent direction of the tracks will be the actual direction of motion of the high energy particles. But if a track starts above the supersaturated layer, the apparent direction would be the opposite of the actual direction. I think we actually see this happening in some of your videos. For example, if you go to the 2:40 mark of your video and play it at 0.25x speed again: th-cam.com/video/XGNvAEtYZkw/w-d-xo.html You see that some of the tracks appearing to the right side of the Fiesta plate appear to go towards the plate, so they must be originating from a point slightly above the supersaturated layer and actually moving downward towards the cold plate. It would be interesting to test this by putting one of your small Uraninite pieces on a small stand in the cloud chamber to raise it slightly above the supersaturated layer and all the tracks should now appear going towards the Uraninite piece instead of away from it. A final thought I have is that since the bottom of the chamber is better shielded than the top and the cosmic rays are coming mostly from above, almost all the tracks due to background radiation probably originate from above the supersaturated layer, so they must be all forming in the opposite direction of their actual direction of motion.
Do you have a design you followed for this prototype? I've been wanting to build one and am having trouble finding a good amount of info on compressor based cloud chambers. Do you plan on posting the build process at any point?
I have a quick question - if these particles are moving at approx the speed of light, am I just seeing an illusion when it appears that you can see the direction of the particle in the chamber? Or, are the particles slowing as they interact with the chamber etc? Thanks for this video and nice work on the chamber!
I found his answer, it's an illusion, the layers aren't equally saturated so of the particle travels down from high saturation to low, the gas will expand in the high saturation more than the low, making it seem like it travelled in that direction. I didn't know either, I knew I was missing something.
I'd hate to bombard you with experiment ideas.But watching this video I was thinking, another neat experiment to see would be to place a piece of paper next to an alpha emitter and see how many tracks are able to penetrate the paper. Assuming placing a partial barrier in the chamber wouldn't disrupt it. As I understand it, paper will block MOST alpha particles, but some will still penetrate a fair ways. Although I guess you can kind of infer the penetrating power of each particle based on how long the track is.
Man, congratulations and thanks in the name of humanity for this amazing piece of art, technology, presentation, the amount of knowledge just shocked me i was watching it with literally dropped jaws all along, i've seen a lot of cloud chamber vids but this one kills everything, i wanted to build a compressor based chamber, so i looked it up whether it works or not, i have an air conditioner what i would happily salvage for this project as its my long time dream to have and build one and yours is just amazing so i gonna stick to a similar design. What do u think, can it work? i saved like half of the script in screenshots as it was so overwhelming what my brain was not expecting from previous experiences of an average video on the internet, you are a diamond holding light in the dark. Thanks again.
Thanks for your comment, but honestly, this is really really hard to build a cloud chamber with a compressor. better make a decent one with peltiers, it's guaranteed to work at low cost and frustrations =)
@@Cloudylabs hahah i already deep dived into it, i achieved - 43 degree Celsius, but my resistor / heating wire based silicone pipe evaporator sucks for the moment, i smoked it with higher voltage, so i have to rebuild it. I achieved some faint alpha particle condensations but it was just a test whether it works or not, but its still under construction. The paint from the metal surface peeled off, i gonna have to use another plate. I will update you about the project if you are interested. I had only old, not very clear isopropanol at home so i gonna purchase some new and clean one. =) i used zinc oxide based baby cream for the moment to transfer the heat to the cold radiator side from the plate with the compressor, aluminum, silicone and cardboard insulation, its pretty homemade looking at the moment but im on it all day all night, you motivated me so much.
@@Cloudylabs i reached below - 50 degree Celsius with a saltwater coolant liquid system and one single 60W peltier module with heatsinks and a small steel plate / nutella jar design, it was working properly but due to its size, there is not much room for a proper evaporator system. Im building the larger fishtank design now, compressor cooled, sandblasted and now black paint coated thick steel plate(50x40cm), 'used' alcohol drainage system, with a special, kinda high power evaporator system, what i havent seen tested by anyone online so far, so im curious whether it works or not really. Let me know if i can contact you for a little chat about these, if you dont mind.
You know "fireplace" video exists... This is much better. Consider making one to replace burning wood-videos. I'm currently building my third peltier cooled cloud chamber. Had success with the two first, but this time 2x2x2 peltier elements for a total of 80x80mm area. This time I'm also using watercooling, but stacking 12706 won't work, I'll need 12715 in bottom. I also got two heat pumps from clothes dryer (that I want to use for building cloud chamber), this could work if I change fluid. A detailed description of your model could be of great value.
Even with the alpha source removed, there still residual "contamination" - so is this is why ingesting Alpha particles in human body is so dangerous ?- even though externally , Alpha can be blocked by a sheet of paper, internally quite serious !
No because it will disintegrate inside you body and the alpha particle will damage the healthy cells. But you can put alpha particle in your hands safely : the 100 micrometer thick of dead cells above your skin is a strong shield to absorb the alpha particle without damaging the internal cells.
I could sit all day long to watch this and listen to the music, while thinking about our universe, everything in and around us made from these particles, which constantly wiggle and fly around. This complexity and beauty, so unbelievable. 🌌
Fist cloud chamber video I've seen. It took me almost 1,5 hours to read and understand what I'm looking at. I tried and I failed again and again as I just found myself staring the chamber like in hypnosis. This works better than staring at fire! Thank you for this magnificent video.
Sad that videos like these get thousands of views instead of tens of millions. :(
@@PSYbuse Thanks for you comment I appreciated it =)
I am blown away how you can see particles from cosmic background. Years of college and I'm just now discovering cloud chambers. I could stare at them for hours! 😮😮😮
And these are DIY?! You sir are amazing! 👏👏👏
Can make them without dry ice or liquid nitrogen too. There are actually several cheap, easy methods. I believe a super easy cheap one could be made for a few dollars with ultrasonic foggers/misters (for example). There are many designs that haven't been invented yet too. If you take the time you might be able to invent one yourself.
Cloud chambers are the new fish tanks
Right? I remember learning about this. It's nothing like watching it happen. Seriously I think every physics class should see this demonstration, you'd suddenly have an explosion of people getting physics degrees.
@@deucedeuce1572 Would a fog machine or nebulizer even work? My understanding is it's the (invisible) gas vapors which are condensing to form a trail of droplets (fog).
@@mattsprengel6723 Worth a shot. Would be cool if people could make these experiments cheaper and easier.
The double alpha line from the Radon is incredible, it's such a clear display of the successive decays of the isotopes!
this is definitely the best cloud chamber I've seen on youtube
When I nod off in bed , amongst the brain noise I do see the odd sparkle flash - a cosmic particle hitting my retina. It's OK I ain't the only one to see it lol.
I have just seen one of your great cloud chamber videos and was wondering if anyone had done a double slit experiment within one?
Thats a fuing awesome Idea!
@@yaykruser X-ray cannon and a lot more tools
@@Realistictwist Thing is it wouldnt work , because we'd be measuring it at the gate :(
nice to see you're back, such an interesting phenomenon to be able to visualize. ever consider super high speed photo microscopy? maybe a collaboration with the 'slo mo guys' or any phantom cam operator. would love to see whats going on on an even more detailed scale.
love the work, thanks
Was just thinking the same thing. Without a doubt this is a pretty sweet unit... Be very interesting indeed.
dang, that could be very cool indeed! you might be able to see the trails progress!
@@guardffire maybe there are some cool spirals or even other anomalous behaviors that we visualize as straight lines because of the magnitude. 👍
"like chemtrails" I like how you just tossed that in there (;
Im impressed the distance the particles ( Alpha?) travel across the tank. Also some of the particles do spiral, circular paths ?? WOW!
I can't believe I sat and watched this whole video. It's fantastic. Thank you.
This is one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Thank you.
I love seeing the temperature gradient on the cold plate. Reminds me of the CMB
Cosmic microwave burrito
You have the best cloud chambers anywhere, awesome stuff. hello from New York!
Congratulations !
It's a very remarkable work.
I made a little expansion cloud chamber in 1986, after Chernobyl disaster. That works very well, but I would like to make a diffusion cloud chamber like your, the diffusion chamber is another thing.
I hope to live enough to can do that, because now I am a little old.
Congratulations again ! Thank you very much.
Love this channel! Hello from Miami, Florida!
Glad to see you up and running again!
One of the most hypnotics visuals i've seen... the cosmic dance .. ;)
This is the best cloud chamber video I've seen! Thank you for making it!
Merveilleux, et un peu angoissant de se dire que toute ces « choses » me traversent à chaque instant…
La musique est parfaite :)
Woo hoo - new content, after a 3yr void. I'd just about given up. 😄🙏
Beautiful, we are "bombarded" every attosecond :) Good thing is almost harmless. Great experiment!
great build, and the music is absolutely perfect for it and well timed. thanks!!!
What can be "nucleation" in real physical manner ? Ethanol break down to CO2+H20 or pure Carbon and H20 temporarily and than combine again to Ethanol? Or it convert into another chemical compound?
I'm talking about this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleation. It's the ions made by charged particles who act as nucleations sites. Ethanol remain ethanol in all the process. You can break ethanol only if you burnt it, which is not the case in this experiment.
@@Cloudylabs - thx for info 👍. Many complex reactions seem to occur.
The beauty of randomness
is it possible to put a laser going through the cloud a week single beam and see if you can capture photons moving off of it or any effect it might have the lights in the devise seem to make some effect
I have made the typically tedious pettier cooled stack with a puny viewing area - it worked but seeing one like in a physics university of a friend of mine is amazing - awesome work!!!!!!
Very nice video and cool build. You have inspired me to build one myself also using phase change cooling. Can you tell me more about your evaporator or share a photo? is it the full size of the cooling plate? What are your thoughts about using a transparent film for heating the glass? Would heating the glass in this way be enough heat to heat the alcohol as well?
Amazing demonstration..I dreamt of this as a kid! I want to build my own now..THANKS
The analogy is the trail left by a jet, which I find a little strange since the jet is following a path decided on by the pilot. The trails left by the particles seem rather random to me and I find it difficult to believe that the particles have any choice in the direction they are taking. It make me think of the erratic paths of lightning strikes. They do not take the straight path to the closest earth location either, so something is preventing them from doing that. Right?
Hey can you provide design details of the cloud chamber, so that I shall try to build it.
Real physics as a medidative experience, who would have thought that to be possible!
Thanks!
Thank you Sir, May I please have another?
Best one I've seen. Physics is awesome!
I am nominating you for the C.L. Stong Memorial Award. Back in the day, he wrote the "Amateur Scientist" for Scientific American magazine -- and I very well remember his cloud chamber project. A lot of sheet copper bending and brazing, plus a monstrous homemade electromagnet . . . big progress since then in materials and technology! Maybe the only thing more easily available back then was a radiation source -- you could still find a wristwatch that sported original glow-in-the-dark (radium-painted) numerals!
Very nicely done. Pretty amazing what you can see with this apparatus.
wow! this is going on all around us and I just learn this today. Its amazing!
I could stare at something like this for hours....
Do you think it could be made reliable enough to be made into a commercially viable (albeit very limited in availability) coffee table?
One of the best cloud chambers I ever saw was at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. This comes close.
I wish my physics prof would have done this experiment for us. Makes it soooo much more real. You should sell these as a kit. Do a survey among students who wants to be a physicist before and after, I bet you'll see the results increase by a magnitude. Publish it, and you'll sell 1000s.
If 220 Radon is almost completely decayed within ten minutes (20:33), then where does this researcher get the Radon 220 from? Do they make it in the lab and use it immediately after?
Collect and condense radon-220 gas that decays from a Thorium-232 sample, I think.
This wire cooper (I think is it) is to heat isopropyl and evaporate it quickly?
Beautiful machine. Ever thought about constructing and selling them?
la lampe infra rouge sert a quoi ? vous pouvez me répondre en anglais je me servirai d'un traducteur.
merci
I'd be curious to see what would happen if a cell phone were placed near or in the cloud chamber.
how much cooling power is required once it reaches equilibrium?
I could watch 10 hours of this stuff.
Very cool! I was surprised that the magnetic field wasn't more obvious. It's so chaotic, I could make up any theory I wanted. S shapes don't make sense to me. I get that there are predominant conditions based on massive quantities of observations, but I have never been sold on what a crowd thinks. This was great though. Thanks.
It is almost like the particles has a frame rate.
Could someone explain please, why we couldn't see/visualize any spiral path?
Glad to see your last prototype is working perfectly. Is there any way to purchase a cloud chamber ? It's a great experiment to display in museums and universities.
I have to end some works in my area soon, then I plan to build clouds chambers for people interested, as I reached nearly the end of developments !
@@Cloudylabs do it right, prove that it increases students getting physics majors, and your sales will skyrocket.
Can anyone explain the details of how a positron (antimatter) would leave a condensation trail? Shouldn't it mutually annihilate the first electron it encounters, I guess combining to produce a photon of appropriate energy? One event was labeled as a gamma (photon) creating an electron + positron pair, with them curving away from each other in opposite directions in the presence of the magnetic field. That makes some sense to me in a vacuum, but not in a densely filled chamber with a super saturated gas condensing in their wake.
Hi Wildcard. Remember that matter is vacuum. It's very unlikely that a moving positon can make a perfect ("head-on") collision with an electron and annihilate. If the positon is not thermalized (this mean the kinetic energy is about 0,025 eV), the probability of this interaction is very very low. But a positon can make a physical collision with an electron during it's flight in matter. This picture show this : www.cloudylabs.fr/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/collision-positon-electron-head-on.png
In the left picture, the positon is coming upright and is deflected by a magnetic field to right. At mid flight, there is a little burst of ionisation. That's where the positon made a "nearly" perfect collision with an electron, giving to him nearly all its kinetic energy. The electron of opposite charge, is then deflected towards left. The positon made the little burst of ionisation in the mid flight with the kinetic energy left, and because it give most of it's energy to the electron, it becomes thermalized and then annihilated with an electron or made a positronium state. If the collision was perfect, (Head -on) yes you can have an annihilation process even if the positron is not thermalized. But this is rare, because most of the physical collisions give the result of the left picture : a transfert of almost all the kinetic energy of the incoming positon to an electron. Picture at right is a positon ejecting 2 electrons at the same time. The positon bounce a little during the process and follow it's way (deflected to right by the magnetic field)
@@Cloudylabs Thank you! It does help to visualize the condensation trails as perturbation of neighboring particles, and not collisions, as they travel through mostly empty space.
What's the thing on the right hand side that more of the activity happen near?
Couldn't you make a supersaturated alcohol vapor solution at room temperature with 0.2 bar pressure?
Would a gamma ray source, say from an old Xray tube, or a magnetron from a microwave oven produce similar/different effects? curious as to the lineratety of those rays - are the straight like an arrow, or do they also curve & wander a bit? Lastly is there a way to calculate the speed of these emissions? They dont appear to be anywhere near lightspeed, do they?
Awesome setup man!! super interesting for sure.
How do you like this machine vs your peltier device? I want to build two, one as a gift. I want to make the best, most reliable and impressive results with minimum care or expertise. I think thermoelectric is inefficient but may be more reliable long term with no moving parts. Great videos. You need to collaborate with slowmo guys.
Very interesting. So the design is something akin to an antigriddle paired with a powerful Nd magnet, and a glass chamber of alcohol vapor ?
Watched the whole vid - very infomative. 👍
Blows my mind
What refrigerant did you use and what temp are you aiming for on the plate?
May I ask how much noisier this equipment is compared to fan-noise of the Peltier cooled version?
This is noiser because of the condenser fan's, but nothing terrible
What would the particles be that leave a circular trail behind?
How do you isolate which are protons?
Whats the wavyness happening on the black background or is it just the camera
That got me thinking. Alpha particles called Alpha simply because it's the most obvious thing you see in the cloud chamber, so they were just described first?
My guess the big mysterious straight line at 17.31 is a high energy muon from space.
Would it be possible to make a vertical cloud chamber that replaces a wall?
No, because gravity is needed to make the supersaturated layer. But you can with an "expansion cloud chamber"
This was incredible. Thank you for sharing it!
Another excellent build. Thank you for sharing these videos!
I have two questions:
1) How often do you see e+ e- pair production in your cloud chambers? Are they created purely from the background gamma radiation or do you use any radioactive sources to create them at a higher rate? In that case what gamma source did you use?
2) How do you think we are able to see the direction of the particles' motion? Most of the time, the tracks seem to appear in a certain direction and disappear in the opposite direction. These particles have energies in the MeV range so they are moving at a good fraction of the speed of light. If we assume they slow down at a constant rate, we shouldn’t be able to notice any direction until the very last moment they come to a stop. For practical purposes, the nucleation sites due to an incoming high energy charged particle would form in the chamber instantaneously. So I don’t understand why the tracks seem to appear in a certain direction, and why they don’t form equally on these ionized regions.
Hi, 1) to create pair of e+,e-, you need at least a gamma of 1,022 MeV of energy. But the probability of gamma to create a pair at this energy is infinitesimal (1,8x10-5cm²/g). You need higher energy, above 2 MeV to have a decent probability of interaction. At 2 MeV the probability is about 1x10-3 cm²/g. So you need high energy gamma emitter to hope to see pair creation. Uraninite minerals can, with the daughter nucleus like 214 Bi and 210 Tl (gamma above 2,3 MeV). But the best source is of course the natural background. 2) You can suppose the direction of motion by looking at the angle of the delta rays if the particle don't stop in the chamber. www.cloudylabs.fr/wp/dedx/. You can also use a magnetic field. The particle will be more deflected at the end of trajectory in the chamber, rather in the beginning. If the particle does more bouncing versus another part of its trajectory, then the boucing region is where it's kinetic energy is the tiniest, so the end of its trajectory. As kinetic energy decrease, the particle get more deflected by the electrostatics cloud of nucleus.
@@Cloudylabs Hi, thank you very much for your response. Here are a few follow-up comments:
1) Do you recall how often you see an e+ e- pair production event? Was the one you show in your video just a lucky accident or does it happen very often (once every min or once every few mins for example?)
2) I am aware of those methods to determine the direction of the propagation. But it looks to me that you can directly do it from the video itself. If you go to for example the 7:25 mark of your video and slow it down to 0.25x speed, you can clearly see the propagation direction of the tracks produced by the radioactive source, or the other tracks due to the background radiation. But if these particles are moving at a fraction of the speed of light, we shouldn’t be able to tell at this frame rate which direction they move. If you consider a straight track for example, it should just form all at once at every point that makes the track, but some of the tracks clearly appear from one end to the other. I was wondering if you had an explanation for that.
@@couplingconstant 1) I started the video at 14:00 to check if there was more pairs in the next 30 seconds.
14:06 it seems that there is 2 directions of motion. The particules are slighly influenced by the magnetic field. 2 particles = a pair
14:09 Same explanation than 15:42
14:10, the "V" in the middle right (high energy pair because no deviation by the magnetic field)
15:42 very likely a pair. Because if it was an electron coming from top, collisionning with a nucleus to become almost backscattered
the electron would have lost most of its energy and thus make a nice curve with the magnetic field, but this is not the case, the curve observed have a
high radius of curvature.
14:19 : same as 14:10
14:22 not a pair but interesting. An incoming high energy electron coming from top, undergo a hard collision with an atomic electron and expect a huge loss of its energy, about half. The rest of energy goes to the collisionned atomic electron. The 2 particules have nearly the same energy because the 2 radius of curvature are nearly the same.
14:31 : the direction of motion of one particule (to right) say that this is a positon, so the whole event is a pair.
14:32 : same as 14:10
14:35 : sale as 14:31, but the electron is not present.
So in 30 seconds, we have observed about 8 positon. I posted the picture here :
www.cloudylabs.fr/wp/some-pair-or-positons/
2) It's an illusion. That's right, particles create ions "instantaneously" because of their high speed. Sometimes it seems that a track emerge from a point and terminate to another if you slow the video. But this is an illusion because you have to remember that particles dont necessarily travel in the same plan where the supersaturated layer is. So, if they are moving slightly upward or downward from this plan, you have some ions which are not from the same distance of the supersaturated layer. The electric field will move the nearest ions towards the supersaturated layer and the condensation start (the 'beginning of the track'). This is followed by the farthest ions which have traveled a bit to reach the supersaturated layer. So we have the impression that a track seems to start and finish but this is not the case. If a particle travelled right into the supersaturated layer, then you have an instantaneous condensation on all the ions. That's was a good question
@@Cloudylabs Thank you for your response.
1) This is a great collection of events. I am quite surprised that the rate is so high. I wish there was a software which could label these events from the video, it would open up lots of possibilities to do some interesting science at home. With machine learning libraries becoming more and more powerful everyday, I wonder if it would be too difficult to write such a classifier. That would be an interesting side project to think about.
2) Actually that’s exactly what I was thinking that might be happening. I think we can draw a few interesting conclusions from this. The speed of the formation of the tracks should be an indication of the angle between the supersaturated layer and the plane that the charged particles move. This angle would of course affect the length of the tracks as well. According to Alexander Langsdorf’s thesis, the supersaturated region is quite thin, and is slightly above the cold plate. So if a track starts either in the supersatured layer or below, and goes upwards, the apparent direction of the tracks will be the actual direction of motion of the high energy particles. But if a track starts above the supersaturated layer, the apparent direction would be the opposite of the actual direction. I think we actually see this happening in some of your videos.
For example, if you go to the 2:40 mark of your video and play it at 0.25x speed again:
th-cam.com/video/XGNvAEtYZkw/w-d-xo.html
You see that some of the tracks appearing to the right side of the Fiesta plate appear to go towards the plate, so they must be originating from a point slightly above the supersaturated layer and actually moving downward towards the cold plate.
It would be interesting to test this by putting one of your small Uraninite pieces on a small stand in the cloud chamber to raise it slightly above the supersaturated layer and all the tracks should now appear going towards the Uraninite piece instead of away from it.
A final thought I have is that since the bottom of the chamber is better shielded than the top and the cosmic rays are coming mostly from above, almost all the tracks due to background radiation probably originate from above the supersaturated layer, so they must be all forming in the opposite direction of their actual direction of motion.
It's like there is some sort of communication going on with those complex but consistent patterns or am I staring at it for too long? :)
one word 'excellent'
Are the streaks SINGLE particle or some bundle?
i like how your into science but still say things like 'chemtrails left by a plane'
Do you have a design you followed for this prototype? I've been wanting to build one and am having trouble finding a good amount of info on compressor based cloud chambers. Do you plan on posting the build process at any point?
Would running two cameras simultaneously allow you to calculate trajectory?
We are certainly all caught in the crossfire!
Curious how large you can make one of these. :)
I have a quick question - if these particles are moving at approx the speed of light, am I just seeing an illusion when it appears that you can see the direction of the particle in the chamber? Or, are the particles slowing as they interact with the chamber etc? Thanks for this video and nice work on the chamber!
I found his answer, it's an illusion, the layers aren't equally saturated so of the particle travels down from high saturation to low, the gas will expand in the high saturation more than the low, making it seem like it travelled in that direction.
I didn't know either, I knew I was missing something.
Why touch the material.. 🤦♀️ Cool rig!
1080p would be so much better to see this. 720 is quite fuzzy.
I think youtube is still processing the video, i will check that later
Amazing work thank you for putting this out.
Great video. Intrusive music.
Wow! Just wow.
Have you ever thought of doing a colab with TheSloMoGuys?
I'd hate to bombard you with experiment ideas.But watching this video I was thinking, another neat experiment to see would be to place a piece of paper next to an alpha emitter and see how many tracks are able to penetrate the paper. Assuming placing a partial barrier in the chamber wouldn't disrupt it. As I understand it, paper will block MOST alpha particles, but some will still penetrate a fair ways. Although I guess you can kind of infer the penetrating power of each particle based on how long the track is.
Man, congratulations and thanks in the name of humanity for this amazing piece of art, technology, presentation, the amount of knowledge just shocked me i was watching it with literally dropped jaws all along, i've seen a lot of cloud chamber vids but this one kills everything, i wanted to build a compressor based chamber, so i looked it up whether it works or not, i have an air conditioner what i would happily salvage for this project as its my long time dream to have and build one and yours is just amazing so i gonna stick to a similar design. What do u think, can it work? i saved like half of the script in screenshots as it was so overwhelming what my brain was not expecting from previous experiences of an average video on the internet, you are a diamond holding light in the dark. Thanks again.
Thanks for your comment, but honestly, this is really really hard to build a cloud chamber with a compressor. better make a decent one with peltiers, it's guaranteed to work at low cost and frustrations =)
@@Cloudylabs hahah i already deep dived into it, i achieved - 43 degree Celsius, but my resistor / heating wire based silicone pipe evaporator sucks for the moment, i smoked it with higher voltage, so i have to rebuild it. I achieved some faint alpha particle condensations but it was just a test whether it works or not, but its still under construction. The paint from the metal surface peeled off, i gonna have to use another plate. I will update you about the project if you are interested. I had only old, not very clear isopropanol at home so i gonna purchase some new and clean one. =) i used zinc oxide based baby cream for the moment to transfer the heat to the cold radiator side from the plate with the compressor, aluminum, silicone and cardboard insulation, its pretty homemade looking at the moment but im on it all day all night, you motivated me so much.
@@Cloudylabs i reached below - 50 degree Celsius with a saltwater coolant liquid system and one single 60W peltier module with heatsinks and a small steel plate / nutella jar design, it was working properly but due to its size, there is not much room for a proper evaporator system.
Im building the larger fishtank design now, compressor cooled, sandblasted and now black paint coated thick steel plate(50x40cm), 'used' alcohol drainage system, with a special, kinda high power evaporator system, what i havent seen tested by anyone online so far, so im curious whether it works or not really. Let me know if i can contact you for a little chat about these, if you dont mind.
@@dronemotionlab did you end up finishing this? Does it work?
Man, do you have any scheme of how you made it? Thanks o/
And is the necessary temperature -40°C or it could be higher - 20°C? Cause I want to make it with a mini freezer?
Interesting how the Beta looks like lighting.
Just hook an ultra slow motion cam to one of these and blast photons through it to see how it reacts in a double split expiriment.
You know "fireplace" video exists... This is much better. Consider making one to replace burning wood-videos. I'm currently building my third peltier cooled cloud chamber. Had success with the two first, but this time 2x2x2 peltier elements for a total of 80x80mm area. This time I'm also using watercooling, but stacking 12706 won't work, I'll need 12715 in bottom.
I also got two heat pumps from clothes dryer (that I want to use for building cloud chamber), this could work if I change fluid. A detailed description of your model could be of great value.
Nice, great to seem most of them are not straight.
Це повинно бути в кожному домі як барометр чи термометр.На цьому навіть продукти можна перевірити на радіоактивність.
sublime..
@8:15 it's not "CHEMTRAILS". That's the word used by flat earthers and such.
The word you're looking for is "CONTRAILS"
So cool
Even with the alpha source removed, there still residual "contamination" - so is this is why ingesting Alpha particles in human body is so dangerous ?- even though externally , Alpha can be blocked by a sheet of paper, internally quite serious !
Amazing!!!
Can you breathe it?
No because it will disintegrate inside you body and the alpha particle will damage the healthy cells. But you can put alpha particle in your hands safely : the 100 micrometer thick of dead cells above your skin is a strong shield to absorb the alpha particle without damaging the internal cells.
So good!
"Like the chemtrails left by a plane, which materialize its trajectory in the sky." I hope this is a joke haha.