Making a Particle Detector (Cloud Chamber)

Can you teach how to make a good metal detector?

Marcelo Henrique Gonçalves

This was brilliant! It made me sign up for Patreon. Keep up the great videos.

I picked up a few load cells from eBay recently. It might make for a funny video if you build a scale for in front of your fridge that controls a lock on the door. Too heavy today no fridge for you!! 🤣

Physical vapor deposition of metals by magnetron sputtering! That would be awesome!!!

Imran Uddin

Put the heat sinks in salted crushed ice. It'll get really cold.

Felix

Don't forget to add a little alcohol and a tiny amount of boric acid to that mixture to stop it from going furry. Though I would imagine for this application it wouldn't be in service for very long.

Dustin

I have had good luck cooling peltiers with water blocks like these: https://www.ebay.com/itm/US-Aluminum-Waterblock-Water-Cooling-Block-for-PC-CPU-Graphics-Card-Hard-Disk/113849122850 They fit four peltier coolers very nicely. Mix up a bunch of glycerin and water in a bucket, which in the right ratio won't freeze until -46C, and put it in the freezer. That should get the mixture down to around -20C. Then just use a pump to circulate it through the water blocks and you can get really low temps! The key is that the coolant is constantly flowing so it extracts the heat very efficiently.

John Hiesey

Thanks for doing this one, it's good to know I am a real inspiration.

Outstandingly funny AND educational. Especially the FBI part. I'm just retiring my 12-year old computer and the new one does actually does talk to me. I forget her name but it is a she. How did she get in there? Who feeds her? Is minimum wage required?

Craig Larson

That sounds like a great idea. I wonder if you could make use of water cooling systems designed for computers as a cheap way of doing this?

When I was at school we were using an alpha source, and the teacher was explaining all of the precautions - super long forceps etc. Then he put a piece of quartz in front of the GM tube (holding it with his hands) to show us how much more radioactive it was than the alpha source.. Mind, as Litvinenko found out, alpha sources are very dangerous if ingested...

Great video. I don't think you are going to see any alpha particles though, unless you put an alpha emitter in the chamber. a couple of cm of air is enough to block them. I would be interested to see quartz and granite as they are often fairly radioactive.

I wonder how well it would work in a house with a high radon level. Our house average is about 2/3rd the limit for radon mitigation and there was a day where the 24Hr reading in the room monitored was nearly double the limit (365Bq/m3). That would have been interesting to observe with a cloud chamber.

Seán Byrne

If anyone is interested I have a couple of videos of my chamber on my youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByZnxni8H5E

I've actually built a similar peltier cooled cloud chamber. You definitelly can stack two peltiers but you can't run them at the same power. I run one @12V and the top one at @5V. The bottom one is cooled by a small water block, small water pump and a ice cold water container. I can get to -40C.

What happens if you combine this with your tesla coil or Van der graaf generator? Next step is a Van der Graaf accelerator. BTW, don't even try to run centrifuges, that would be a violation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

That doesn't necessarily work, unfortunately. The problem is that as well as transferring heat from the cold->hot sides, the Peltier generates heat, so the next Peltier in the stack has to transfer Pumped heat + device 1 generated heat + device 2 generated heat to its hot side - this typically results in the hot side getting *much* hotter, and the cold side no colder (and sometimes hotter!)

More educational videos for youth level understanding. I use your videos frequently for educational purposes at junior highschool but most of them become way to complicated. If you want high watch numbers make some accessible videos for teens and over and we'll use them over and over and over and over :-)

One of the best your videos (video composing, jokes, idea, etc). :)

You know, nearly electrocuting yourself, constant electrical explosions, fires, cutting yourself and stuff is all fine... But talking to yourself? I'm starting to get worried :(

Put a thorium gas heating mantle in it!

Adam Nash

Nice Davie504 cameo! And of course a fantastic, educational, fun video - as always. Thank you!

Matt Walters

Love the video AND the ubiquitous Digikey red ruler! That thing pops up everywhere I go recently.

matt stott

Thank you!

ElectroBOOM [Mehdi Sadaghdar]

This video is why I am proud to be one of your Patreons. You hit the perfect balance of humor and "cold" science. Well done.

Ron Jones

Idea for next video? How about your own electric chair. I’m a lawyer so I would make a good elephant for a test subject.

Just stack peltier devices? Bottom one cools fins of one above it

What about making arcs in different gases? They should look different in color and you already have a chamber where you can put them in low pressure

DAVIE SPOTTED

please avoid dying this time. I think we all remember the sparkler Jacob's ladder, and we'd miss you if you were a crisp

dirtknight

show how the volume of "3 million" is different depending on what you have; atoms -> a dust spec; molecules -> a salt grain; salt grains -> a glass full; match heads -> a bucket full; and so on... (*all volumes generously and most likely wrongly estimated by my brain*) Also: match heads make a nice boom when generous voltage is applied ^^

Congratulations on the 3 Million subscribers! Time to work out a bit as a precaution for the cookies season! Use those few youtube dollars to get one of these expensive vibration plates and you'll be the rock in a few hours (how do they work anyway, i mean from a technical perspective?) ... Or keep the money and make an even better DIY version, that'll be fun! The muscular Rectifier! Keep up the good work!

Surely it’s time for a Marx generator with arc gap to represent each million subs?!

Pete Golding

Make some food, a cake? I am pretty sure massive mishaps may happen in the kitchen as well :)

One of those chain-mail Faraday cage suits that Tesla coil people always demo!

Jason Hoffman

0.3 billion volts!!!

3 million subs... 3 million volts?

GK

1st!