How to Build and Use a Cloud Chamber
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- Опубликовано: 29 апр 2015
- Detailed instruction for building a high performance cloud chamber that will show beta, alpha, positron and muon tracks. Also explains how to identify different types of tracks.
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So exciting. Thank you
I love to watch this type videos thanks , u deserve More.
Very nice build video and track analysis 😀
Thank you!
Thank you for this! This was extremely interesting. I would love to take it around the house, to watch for changes in its behavior. Radon in the basement, maybe? Would a laser affect it? I have quite a few questions, but I'm falling asleep; I'll watch the rest tomorrow, after some coffee.
pocket83² The biggest chance would be to compare the number of tracks at sea level to those at the top of a mountain. The discovery channel did it and the high altitude tracks outnumbered sea level tracks by two to one. I've shined a 50 mw (50 not the usual 5 mw pointer) green laser into the chamber and not noticed any effect.
Great video and build - can you comment on any recommendations a material for the base? Are there better/worse metals? What about painting to make it black? Thanks
Aluminum is best because it's a good thermal conductor, is cheap and easy to cut. I uses an old aluminum cookie sheet. Yes, by all means paint it black. This increases makes seeing the track easier.
1. Will humid weather affect the chamber?
2. Is “Everclear”, 120 proof useful?
I wouldn't think humidity would be an issue. By the time it gets running the chamber is saturated with alcohol fumes and I assume they would dominate over any humidity. I've never heard of "Everclear," so I can't comment on it. 120 proof is only 60-percent alcohol, which is low for cloud chambers. They work best with the purest alcohol you can find. I've gotten mine to work with 91-percent (182-proof) alcohol, but it didn't do as well as 99-percent. Also, proof ratings are used for consumable alcohol like ethanol. I've never used that. I have tried methanol and isopropyl alcohol and they both worded so I'd stick with them. Thanks for commenting and if you're building your own cloud chamber, good luck!
Excellent video and tutorial. So you did not use any source at all. Could I use my monazite source or will it produce too much heat and block any disintegrations?
My guess is that if you placed it in the chamber when you set it up, by the time everything got going it would have cooled down enough to not interfere with track production, if the Samp,e was under 1 cm across. The only way to know for sure is to try it. Good luck!
@@wayneschmidt490 Thank you! I am going to also try my radium watch hands.
I've been trying to get this work and I'm thinking the issue may be my flashlights. I tried commenting earlier with a link to the product on Amazon, but my guess is RUclips isn't letting my comment post becasue of that. I'm using small LED flashlights, each flashlight has 9 bulbs in a circle. Do you think the light is too dispersed? I don't really want to have to buy new flashlights if I can avoid it
This is very odd. I received this comment yesterday and every time I clicked on it to reply, it disappeared. It showed up today as a new comment and this time when I click on it it remains and I can reply. RUclips seems to be getting a little unstable recently.
The flashlight you describe could be the problem. A circle of lights will flood the chamber with illumination and reduce contrast to the point where the traces are hard to I checked out your channel and was impressed see. That's why I used a line of focusable flashlights to create a narrow plain of light, which only illuminated the active zone in the chamber. I also placed a light barrier in the hanger that prevents any of the light from the flashlights from striking the bottom on the chamber to create the darkest background possible against which the traces could stand out.
I checked out your channel and was impressed with the number and range of science videos you've produced. Thanks for commenting and good luck with your chamber!
There is a much better light source and it's way cheaper, although they do get warm as well. Those light bars you see on trucks all the time, the LED lights, you can get them in cubes, 6 inch strips, all the way up to I think 40 in. These will absolutely blow away those maglites. They don't draw a lot of current they run on 12 volt, the 2in cubes, or the 6-inch would be your best bet. You could run just two cubes, and make one, four inch long light,etc.
Thanks for the idea! The thing I liked about the magnates is that they can be focused, which is important for creating maximum contrast. Bare LED light strips don't have that capability and even if the LEDs are low angle LEDs, they can't produce as narrow a cone as the maglites focused to their narrowest beam. Have you made working cloud chambers with both lighting options and compared them? If so, I'd like to watch a video about it to see if I can use your idea to improve my own cloud chamber. Thanks for commenting!
Is it required to use dri ice has a cooling system or I can use anything that can reach the Sam temperature
Anything that gets as cold or colder as dry ice and makes good contact with all of the metal base should work well. Peltier coolers are convenient for small chambers and can be used over and over, but required a lot of electricity, power supplies and are expensive. Thanks for commenting!
@@wayneschmidt490 it completely off topic but what kind of telescope it is in your profile picture
@@charlesoliviersdufaux6943 That's one of my greatest projects. It's VOYAGER, a motorized binocular telescope chair. It was featured in a 1976 issue of Sky and Telescope. I have a webpage about it here:
waynesthisandthat.com/voyager.htm
I no longer have it because it got too difficult to manage as I got older. But it was great while it lasted. In the end, I broke it up and gave the two telescopes to a local astronomy club.
I really want to build a cloud chamber to teach my daughters. The are 7 and 8 so I'm curious what age I should wait for? Should I begin now or should I wait until they area little older and have more patience and interest
Oddly enough, I have exactly the information you need. I showed my cloud chamber to my six grandchildren ranging in age from 7 to 15. While they all showed some interest, only the ones in high school showed any interest. The 7-10 year- olds looked at the little cloud tracks for a few seconds, then quickly lost interest. The older kids had had enough science from school to appreciate what was happening and stick with it for a while. But, even they quickly faded away. Cloud chambers don't have any flashing lights, sound effects or wild action so most young people, and sadly most adults as well, don't find them a source of long-term interest. My advice would be to wait until your children are in their early teens, unless they are being brought up early in science. Good luck!
@@wayneschmidt490 I try to do as many science experiments with them as possible but this one is mostly for me lol. I missed out on my chance to have a proper education so I spend the little time I have trying to study and watch lectures.
@@wayneschmidt490 thank you for making this video. I will definitely make a cloud chamber the second I gather up all the materials. I have most of them already
The tank looks gold the torches look gold the tape looks gold
Everything's yellow and gold on a blue sheet
But you say black? It's black when torches are on
Is this my eyes only?
Your eyes are fine. The color issue was my mistake. When I shot the opening segments I forgot to set the white balance on the camera correctly, so everything got shifted toward the yellow. When filming the chamber in action the color balance was corrected for the light coming out of the flashlights so everything looks more like it actually did. Sorry for the confusion. Thanks for commenting!
Pretty neat. I might have to make one. But "Nuculus"? Come on, man.
Ouch! You got me! I mispronounced it like nooculus instead of nucleus. My bad. Sadly, I can't fix that. Anyway, you earn top credits for enduring that video. It was one of my early posts and has such a boring, slow, monotone narration that even I find it difficult to watch. Thanks for commenting!
This is by far the most informative video I've found on cloud chambers. My question is, have you seen anything that would indicate that their energy is coming from the outside of the chamber? I know we're "told" that, but other than being "told", I haven't seen any aspect of it that even points to that being the case. Looks to me like this is just the behavior of the alcohol.
If this is all originating inside the chamber, then every once in a while, you would see a random one start at one wall or finish at another wall. But that would have more to do with running into a barrier than being related to an outside influence. Also, that's the only solid object in the chamber, so if some of them originated there, it could be because it's a solid object, not because it's at the perimeter.
+gilbet Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
The alpha particles are from radioactive radon decay. This is a naturally occurring gas. Some gets trapped when the chamber is closed up. As time goes on, the number of such alpha particles decreases because most of the Radon has decayed. The beta particles are from muons blasting through the glass walls of the chamber and either spontaneously decaying into a beta particle or interacting with an atom to eject a beta particle. So the muon is where the energy is coming from. Also, because they carry a -1 charge, muons can leave tracks themselves.
If you don't believe the tracks are made by charged subatomic particles, then what are they? What would cause the alcohol to produce randomly directed trails such as those seen in a cloud chamber?
Very few particles have enough energy to travel the full width of the chamber to appear at one wall and transverse all the way across the opposite wall. I have seen a few muons leave such tracks and only twice a primary cosmic ray do it, but it does happen.
I don't see how the glass wall of the chamber could be the source of the beta particles, unless a muon striking it very close to the inside surface ejected one with sufficient energy to break free of the glass's work function and enter the active area of the cloud chamber.
I've built a easier and simpler cloud chamber that I will be posting a video on in the near future. You could build one and observe the trails for yourself.
Thanks again for commenting! If you have any specific questions, please feel free to ask them and I'll do my best to respond. Please don't take anything I said as a challenge of criticism of what you believe. It's good to doubt and question. If no one did that we would never find anything out.
"Stellar" experiment and description.
+islamkillsAmericans Thank you! Sorry I didn't respond right away. For some reason RUclips has stopped sending me email notifications when someone comments on one of my videos.
Wayne, great video. Few questions for you if you don't mind. We are thinking about building one of these for next years science fair.
1. How long will this chamber operate?
2. Once the chamber stops working how long can it be reset?
3. Have you investigated using LED strip lighting rather than the expensive flashlights? The strip lights can't be focused, but this might not be a problem. Also you can get water proof LED script lights that you can put directly on the inside of the aquarium eliminating the frost problem. I've seen some other production quality cloud chambers on RUclips (after I viewed your video!) and they have LED lighting inside, but the chambers are much smaller and don't quite work the way your's does.
Again, great stuff Wayne and thanks for sharing.
William Hayden With 10 pounds of dry ice in a 1.5-inch thick slab I get at least a solid hour of operation. When that dry ice sublimes, replace it with a new slab and the chamber should be operating in as little as five minutes if the ice exchange is made quickly. If the chamber warms up to ambient temperature than it'll take ten or fifteen minutes to show lots of tracks. I made an LED strip using 20 of the brightest, narrowest angle white LEDs I could find. They worked, but the beam spread was greater than the flashlights. This put more light off to the sides, which reduced contrast and made the tracks harder to see. I to have seen a commercial cloud chamber which uses strings of LEDs and it seems to work fine. One problem with the LEDs in my chamber is that they didn't generate enough waste heat to prevent the window from getting covered in frost. As you mentioned, the commercial chamber had the LEDs inside the chamber so this wasn't a problem, though it would create a heat source inside the chamber, which would reduce the size of the active area. If you haven't seen my webpage about my chamber, here it is:waynesthisandthat.com/cloud%20chamber.html . Also, did you watch the video of the rare cosmic ray I captured? If not, you might find it interesting: ruclips.net/video/Rpp9E-BtUY8/видео.html.
Wayne Schmidt I appreciate that the cost of the lighting system is a hurdle. One option is to use a slide projector. They produce very bright, focused beams. Another is a different flashlight I've recently purchased from Amazon (www.amazon.com/UltraFire%C2%AE-Bright-Lumens-Adjustable-Flashlight/dp/B00FRAZ7ZG/ref=sr_1_3?s=hardware&ie=UTF8&qid=1431621901&sr=1-3&keywords=2000+lumen+flashlight) When focused, it produces an extremely bright beam and is much cheaper than the LED Maglites. I think two of these would do the trick. They come in various combinations of extras that can affect the price. Shipping is also an issue. Some sellers offer then very cheaply then nail you on shipping and handling charges.
Wayne Schmidt I did watch your other video. Right after I watched this one! :) I also watched a number of other videos on Cloud Chambers after, but found your video to be better in many ways. :)
I just made one of these, but never saw any tracks at all. Took the americium 241 pill out of a smoke detector, and used a 2% thorium electrode. I used 99% ISO alcohol, and different led lights, and a small flashlight. Nothing. I'm thinking this is not that easy, or living close to sea level has something to do with the results? Not sure what could be wrong?
+Redshift40 I tried several of the radiation sources you mentioned and also didn't get much out of them. Part of the problem can be that if they are added after the chamber has cooled down, their warmth kills the cloud chamber effect for up to ten minutes until they get cold enough to let trails form close to them. By that time they have enough alcohol and water condense on their surfaces to block the radiation. Even if those two issues aren't a problem, I found that the trails they produce are so weak and short they are hard to see. By far the most satisfying results occur with natural radiation.
You're being at sea level should not prevent the cloud chamber from working. Although it's true that using one on top of a high mountain will show more tracks, even at sea level there should be dozens per minute.
There are several factors that can prevent a cloud chamber from working. The first is the bottom not getting cold enough. The dry ice needs to have a lot of surface area contact with the bottom of the chamber and that bottom must be made out of a thermally conducting material like aluminum. If the dry ice as in small chunks so that only a few pieces actually make contact with the bottom and that bottom is an insulator like glass or plastic it's doubtful it will work. The second most common problem is that by the time the bottom is cold enough to create the cloud-forming layer, the top of the chamber where the alcohol is has gotten so cold that not enough alcohol is evaporating and falling down into the track producing zone. The quick cure for this is to place a heat pad on top of the chamber where the alcohol is or just place a towel damp with hot water there. If using the towel technique, place it in a plastic bag so that evaporation doesn't cool it down right away.
One final issue is size. The larger the chamber the more tracks will be visible. It's kind of like watching for lightning. Lay on your back in an open field and you'll be able to see a large area of storm and more lightning bolts. Now look straight up through a narrow tube, the same as using a small cloud chamber, and you're going to see very few if any lightning bolts.
Those are a few of the more common problems. If you can describe your chamber I'll try to help you get it going. How big is it and what shape is it? What's it made of? What type of dry ice are you using? What are you using to keep the alcohol warm? How are you shining the light into the chamber? Through one side very close to the bottom? Is the bottom and rest of the chamber painted black to make the tracks stand out?
Cloud chamber really do work and are worth the effort. Let's see if we can get yours functioning!
Thanks for commenting!
+Wayne Schmidt - Thanks for your prompt reply. I have until the 30th to get this working, but not many days off till then to work on this. I am using dry ice pellets and a thick (1mm) aluminum cookie sheet with the bottom painted flat black. I have a photo of it here... plus.google.com/106948314621495372613/posts/TkL5P8x29qC
I did get a good cloud, but no trails. The fish tank is 19"x 9 3/4" The bottom where the dry ice goes is a styrofoam cooler lid. I placed 3 hot water bottles on the top, and blackened 3 sides, leaving a slit for the light. I used 3 different types of lighting. I think it could be not enough contact with the cookie sheet, or it is too thick? I would love to get this working. I'm going to try again tomorrow to see if I can get block dry ice, a thinner aluminum sheet, a flashlight that will focus, and bigger sponges. I used thin highly absorbent sponge pads and found the alcohol stopped raining in about 30 min. And I soaked them good with almost half a 500mL bottle. But it could be that it just wasn't cold enough, or I got the top too hot? What will keep a large sponge stuck to the top of the glass tank? 2 part epoxy perhaps?
Cheers!
+Redshift40 The chamber looks great. It should work.
How thick is the aluminum in the base that touches the dry ice? Unless it's more than 1/8th inch thick I wouldn't think that would be an issue.
If you can't find slab dry ice, I get mine from Albertson's grocery stores, try crushing the pellet dry ice into a powder, leveling it in the Styrofoam base without compressing it, then pushing the chamber down on it to maximize the amount od contact.
One possible problem is that the thoriated tungsten rod and its base may not be getting cold enough. The putty holding the supports could be acting as thermal insulators preventing it from getting cold enough to let the chamber work. Also, the active track-producing layer is very close to the chamber's base, starting at around 1/8th inch and going up to 1/2 or 3/4 inch. The rod looks like it could be above that. My recommendation would be to remove the rod and it's base and get the chamber working with natural radiation. Once you've got that, add the rod and base back in and see if they are the source of the problems. I wouldn't think you need a holder for the rod. Its radiation should come off in all directions so just laying it on the bottom of the chamber should work. That would also eliminate the thermal load of its holder and place the rod in direct contact with the cold bottom of the chamber.
As for mounting the sponges, I used felt and silicone aquarium cement and it worked well.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
+Redshift40 I took a closer look at your chamber and noticed something that is a lot different than mine, and it could be critical. If you look at the one I made, you can see a picture of it on my webpage about it here waynesthisandthat.com/cloud%20chamber.html, you'll see that the foam insulation comes up the sides of the tank almost 2 inches except where it's cut out for the flashlights. This insulation prevents heat from the outside coming through the walls of the chamber down low where the active track producing layer is trying to form. If yours doesn't have some sort of insulation like this, that could be a problem. If that's the case, all you need to do is tape some 1-inch strips of foam around the bottom perimeter of the tank and it should help.
OK thanks. I have some 1" foam so I can build a better box around it then.
Hi Wayne, You may want to check out some of the super bright Cree LED flashlights you can get on ebay for a fraction of the cost of the Maglights. Here is a link to one of these: www.ebay.com/itm/like/321607843646?lpid=82&chn=ps
All the best!
RonALampman Thanks for the idea! I got one that was similar but found it put out too much heat. It created currents inside the chamber that were a problem. I'm now experimenting with moving it away far enough so that it provides enough heat to keep the glass from frosting. It's very tricky to do. The ones you sent are better than what I tried because they are cylindrical in shape and line up better. I'm looking them over but need to be careful to only get ones that focus. Thanks again!
Wayne Schmidt You're welcome. Oh, I noticed you are pretty handy with a soldering iron and potentiometers so, you can dial down the input voltage for a given light if it is too bright. Also, there are many that have a real tight focus beams. BTW, you have an awesome channel and I subscribed. All the best!
RonALampman LEDs have a minimum voltage below which they don't work. LED flashlights "fake" dimming by rapidly pulsing the light on and off. Wiring in a potentiometer doesn't work.
Thank for the kind words about the channel and subscribing. Count on updates at least once a week. Tonight's project is video taping wintogreen lifesaver flashes. I reviewed a dozen youtube attempts and none really captured the flash. I'm hoping I can do better. Wish me luck!
Wayne Schmidt Hi Wayne, the way I've been getting them to dim is by reducing the voltage like when a battery is dying. I don't exceed their max voltage, but reduce it from there to get a true dimming effect. Yes they will go out when the voltage drops low enough, but it has worked for me. I used this method to reduce power from 5v to 3.5 using a brushed ESC on a UFO to keep from blowing the LED out. It ran brightly on 5v but burned out in a matter of minutes. Now it works great.
RonALampman That makes sense. I assumed the LEDs were being driven close to their minimum voltage. But if they are being over driven, then a potentiometer would work. Thanks for the idea.