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    Wilson Cloud Chamber

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    mairaj2
    The cloud chamber, invented by Charles Wilson in 1911, uses supersaturated water or alcohol vapor to detect ionizing radiation particles. When a charged particle passes through, it ionizes the vapor along its path. Water droplets then condense around the ions, leaving a visible track. Alpha particles leave a broad, straight track while electrons show a thinner, curved one in magnetic fields. Wilson's original design saturated air with vapor then rapidly expanded it, cooling the vapor to condense on ions and reveal particle tracks.

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    Wilson Cloud Chamber

    Uploaded by

    mairaj2
    107 views4 pages
    The cloud chamber, invented by Charles Wilson in 1911, uses supersaturated water or alcohol vapor to detect ionizing radiation particles. When a charged particle passes through, it ionizes the vapor along its path. Water droplets then condense around the ions, leaving a visible track. Alpha particles leave a broad, straight track while electrons show a thinner, curved one in magnetic fields. Wilson's original design saturated air with vapor then rapidly expanded it, cooling the vapor to condense on ions and reveal particle tracks.

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    olevel

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    The cloud chamber, invented by Charles Wilson in 1911, uses supersaturated water or alcohol vapor to detect ionizing radiation particles. When a charged particle passes through, it ionizes the vapor along its path. Water droplets then condense around the ions, leaving a visible track. Alpha particles leave a broad, straight track while electrons show a thinner, curved one in magnetic fields. Wilson's original design saturated air with vapor then rapidly expanded it, cooling the vapor to condense on ions and reveal particle tracks.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as ppt, pdf, or txt
    107 views4 pages

    Wilson Cloud Chamber

    Uploaded by

    mairaj2
    The cloud chamber, invented by Charles Wilson in 1911, uses supersaturated water or alcohol vapor to detect ionizing radiation particles. When a charged particle passes through, it ionizes the vapor along its path. Water droplets then condense around the ions, leaving a visible track. Alpha particles leave a broad, straight track while electrons show a thinner, curved one in magnetic fields. Wilson's original design saturated air with vapor then rapidly expanded it, cooling the vapor to condense on ions and reveal particle tracks.

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    Wilson cloud

    chamber
    The cloud chamber, also known as the
    Wilson chamber, is used for detecting
    particles of ionizing radiation.
    In its most basic form, a cloud chamber
    is a sealed environment containing a
    supercooled, supersaturated water or
    alcohol vapor. When an alpha particle
    or beta particle interacts with the mixture,
    it ionizes it.

    Sudden descend of piston supersaturates chamber


    and water droplets condense on any ions present
    The resulting ions act as condensation nuclei, around which a mist will form
    (because the mixture is on the point of condensation). The high energies of alpha
    and beta particles mean that a trail is left, due to many ions being produced along
    the path of the charged particle. These tracks have distinctive shapes (for example,
    an alpha particle's track is broad and straight, while an electron's is thinner and
    shows more evidence of deflection by collisions). When any uniform magnetic field
    is applied across the cloud chamber, positively and negatively charged particles
    will curve in opposite directions, according to the Lorenz force law with two
    particles of opposite charge.
    Charles Thomas Rees Wilson (1869-1959) is
    credited with inventing the cloud chamber.
    Inspired by sightings of the Brocken Spectre
    while working on the summit of Ben Nevis in
    1894, he began to develop expansion
    chambers for studying cloud formation and
    optical phenomena in moist air. Very rapidly
    he discovered that ions could act as centers
    for water droplet formation in such
    chambers. He pursued the application of this
    discovery and perfected the first cloud
    chamber in 1911.
    C.T.R. Wilson’s cloud chamber of 1912

    In Wilson's original chamber the air inside the


    sealed device was saturated with water vapor,
    then a diaphragm is used to expand the air inside
    the chamber (adiabatic expansion). This cools
    the air and water vapor starts to condense. When
    an ionizing particle passes through the chamber,
    water vapor condenses on the resulting ions and
    the trail of the particle is visible in the vapor
    cloud. A diagram of Wilson's apparatus is given
    A diagram on Wilson’s apparatus. The cylindrical left. C.T.R. Wilson, along with Arthur Compton,
    cloud chamber [A] is 16.5cm across by 3.4cm deep received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1927 for
    his work on the cloud chamber.
    A Wilson cloud chamber from our collection

    Rutherford and Mardsen used a Wilson cloud


    chamber, very similarly with the one from our
    collection, to study alpha particle scattering by
    light elements in hope to get deeper inside the
    nucleus (i.e. smaller Z). Rutherford and
    Mardsen
    occasionally observed in the their Wilson cloud
    chamber tracks up to 4 times longer (either four
    times larger energy or 2 times smaller charge).
    So, they introduced the notion of “H-particles”
    and speculate that they are nuclei of Hydrogen
    knocked out from atoms by alpha particles.
    And, so these became to be known as protons.

    Mardsen observed similar “H-particles” in an air-


    filed Wilson cloud chamber, but did not have a
    chance to Pursue further …

    Rutherford and Soddy are awarded the Nobel


    Prize for discovery of element transmutation

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