Physics Projects

Purpose

This section is intended to document physics projects I'm working through. If any part of the following is unclear, please direct any enquiries to me directly via the 'Contact' page.

Projects

Project 1 - building a cloud chamber.

This project seeks to build a home cloud chamber that can be used to detect the presence of cosmic particles using equipment that can be easily sourced.

Research

Begining with a research phase, all the resources accessed here are open source. Any number of videos were used for reference. The video linked in the following has been used as an initial starting point Cloud Chamber Video 1

Materials

The materials required to construct this cloud chamber are:

Heat sink
Isopropyl alcohol
Felt
Aluminium tape
Warm vessel
Torch
Cold vessel
Kettle

The physics behind this projects stems from the presence of particles consistently generated from background sources. Typically these are uncharged and pass through the earth and without detection or interaction. Ranging in makeup but including neutrinos, these can be detected using the following equipment. The idea is to create a vessel that contains a heat gradient between warm and cold sources. From there, a felt cloth is soaked in Isopropyl and placed in contact with the warm heat source. Noting the low evaporating temperature of Isoproyl, this vaporizes and is contained within a chamber. At the opposite side of the chamber to the felt, the heat sink (maintaining a significantly reduced temperature) cools the vaporized alcohol and creates a state of near imbalance within the vapor. Any perturbation to the vapour causes the droplets surrounding the perturbation to condense and creates a vapour trail - similar to that seen from a plane in flight. The particles mentioned previously flow through the chamber, causing this disturbance and creating a vapour trail. These are the trails I intend to observe within this project.

If successful there will be a second stage to this project where I intend to introduce a magnetic field across the chamber to create an observable curvature impacting any charged aprticles present.