Microcosm with a View

The camera allows you to view the traces of electrically charged particles (ions) on which drops of alcohol condense and appear as a trail. For this to happen, the vapor must be supersaturated, that is, ready to form fog. This condition occurs near the black plate on the bottom of the chamber cooled to about -30° C, where the vapor that diffuses from above is found to be supersaturated thus forming a visible trace of droplets.

The cloud chamber allows you to view various types of particles such as alpha particles (which produce short and rather large traces), electrons (thin traces that can be straight or curved and that can cross the entire chamber), muons that is particles produced by cosmic radiation (which generate straight and clearly visible traces).

The instrument consists of a lamp, source of the light radiation, and a metal sheet connected to an electroscope. The emission of electrons from the metal foil causes the foil to be positively charged. The electroscope detects this charge.

The electron diffraction experiment allows us to observe the wave nature of the particles (waves of matter).

The light streaks inside the sphere are generated by electrons accelerating from the center outwards. The electrons hitting the gas atoms inside the sphere cause light to be emitted as an effect of the electrons falling back after the collision in the atomic orbits allowed to them. increase the potential difference resulting in a higher concentration of the light strips.

The operating principle of this device is based on the different absorbing behavior of the white surfaces compared to the black ones. The molecules of the gas are in fact hit by the photons of the electromagnetic radiation and move with speed proportional to the energy of the photons of the incident radiation. The black faces of the radiometer absorb the shocks of the molecules while the white faces repel the molecules themselves. The energetic imbalance between the two surfaces causes the faces to rotate.

Discovered in the late 1960s, the Aerogel material has several applications. It is used as a thermal insulator especially in aeronautics (due to its very light weight) and to absorb sounds. Aerogel is used in particle detectors called RICH (acronym for Ring Imaging Cherenkov), which can identify the mass of particles based on the Cherenkov radiation that a charged particle produces precisely by passing through matter. Cherenkov light is emitted when the speed of the charged particle is greater than the speed of light in that material. The ratio of the two speeds determines the angle of emission of this light relative to the direction of the particle. If the material is highly transparent, and the Aerogel is, the light emitted can be collected on a plane. The angle of light emission depends on the mass and speed of the particle in question. It is therefore the physics observable that allows us to trace the mass of the particle.