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Hi, this video is sponsored by curiosity stream, the source of some of the best documentaries in really a sellout right at the beginning. What we like science and knowledge, documentaries - don't we yeah at least put a proper shared on people, will figure out crazy. Fine, you realize we are the same person. Don't you I like to show you how to make a particle detector, so in case of a nuclear disaster, you can see with your own eyes the amount of radiation you are receiving before your body melts just joking.

This device is a fun project to help you observe the radiations and particles we are bombarded with every day from the universe in case of a nuclear disaster. Your body melting would be a good enough indicator. This device is called a cloud chamber originally designed by Charles mance Williams, Wilson. Basically, it's a glass container with a super cold surface on the bottom that contains alcohol vapor.

The vapor creates a thin layer of cloud over the cold surface, which is our detector. Let's make it then I'll explain later I've never made it before, but I know how it works. Okay, so hopefully it won't fail badly. I've seen other youtubers use dry ice to create the super cold they need, but for my cold surface I'll be using my Peltier device cold surface I made in my previous video.

What did you think I make it for a fridge? No, I like particles and radiations and hello FBI agent what this is for educational purposes only. Is it now just watch to the end of the video before swatting my house? Oh yeah, oh wait! Oh by the way do you SWAT Canadian residents. We do yeah. The problem I have with this is that, with my inefficient fan cooling system, I can only cool the surface down to 5 to 3 degrees Celsius.

While, according to Wikipedia, I need cooler than minus 26 degrees C when we apply a DC voltage across a Peltier device, which is this white piece attached to the heatsink, it creates a temperature difference between its two surfaces up to like 60 degrees Celsius. Now, if we cool down the hot surface, with the same temperature difference between the two surfaces, the whole surface can be freezing. But with my fan I can only cool the hot surface to around fifty to sixty degrees Celsius, and so the cold surface comes close to zero. But I have a plan I'll, create a container filled with water and put the heat sink in it and freeze the water with the ice water at zero degrees.

My surface could go down to minus 50 degrees. Hopefully I create the container using this wooden panel, which should also help with thermal insulation. I don't want to make a sawdust mess in my room again. I wonder if I can cut it with my knife.

Are you getting nervous for me cutting towards my finger? You should you must never cut toward your body parts slap like on this video. If you agree approved, let's see if connected with a knife, helped at all nope. I have to use a saw now. We just hot glue these pieces together then I'll, fully cover inside of this box with silicon to make sure the wood doesn't warp or damage with water.
Now I will make a clear container using Plexiglas epic beautiful now I will glue them together using some two-part epoxy. I did bad glue job. The surface is dirty with glue, never remove the protective layer until that glue is dry. Maybe I can clean it a bit better after the glue dries for now.

Let's silicon, I add more silicone around the whole thing to insulate it better from the outside world and also put some silicone on the edge of the surface, and then I add some soul to the edge of the glass. So it doesn't stick to the silicon and then I push the glass on top of the silicon and let it dry the silicon should provide a good seal to prevent the air from escaping. Now we peel this off, not bad, but I don't know if this seal was necessary. Now I'll fill this container with water and put the whole thing in freezer to freeze while I'm working on the glass.

Now we cut some sponge in half and we want to glue these inside our container right here. These sponges will be soaked in alcohol and act like alcohol container, but before we glue our sponges in there, we cut them open at the center and sprinkle some resistors. In the groove see, I put three one point: two kilo ohm resistors in series and I'll place them in this cart. I made in the phone and I'll run the system between 24 and 30 volts, and these resistors will create some heat that vaporizes the alcohol smash.

Like now, I solder the two forms in parallel and now we hot glue our foams in the glass I ran out of proper sized glue sticks for my hot glue gun. Now we need some lights, but the problem is that this string runs on 12 volt. The good thing about these string lights is that you can cut them along these lines and they continue being functional like an earthworm. So we cut to pieces the length we need.

Every piece is still functional at 12 volts. Now we just solder them in series and they'll work at 24 volt, and now we do our lights to the side of the glass right at the bottom. Like this now, when we turn on the light, it will illuminate the mist created on the cold surface. Oh man, what happened here? Why is it peeled off deep water get under there and iced up or did the whole thing contract? Look at this? It pushed my module up, it's all ice.

Damn it look at all the ice. Under these modules, I tried to fix it. Let's put it back in the fridge, as is and see if it works, otherwise I'll have to do dry ice. Okay, now that we are waiting for the big one to freeze, I froze my single module in water and, let's see if it can actually go that low of a temperature, I will run it at 10 volts which I want to do, for the big module and The temperature reading here is in degrees Celsius, which is zero right now, let's power it up, look at it go well, it's cooler than minus 26 that we need, and it's probably colder.
My thermocouple is not making a good contact. Let's go to maximum 12 volt. Well, that didn't make much of a difference. Well, the result is not super promising.

It's kind of marginal, especially with my bigger broken plate, as soon as the water melts and heats up, the temperature rises too. So I have only a few minutes, especially when the ice melts around the heatsink. It makes a good insulator to the eyes and it's temperature rises, and you see that the temperature doesn't fall as low as we expect it to not nice well, whatever. Let's try it I'll soak the phones in alcohol power it up, and now we wait.

I created the mist, it's detecting! Nothing though not a single particle is passing through my detector or maybe it's because it's not cold enough or maybe I'm blind. Oh, I saw something up there. It is, I saw it. Oh yeah there I saw it hey FBI, man, do you see it yeah, it's beautiful, we'll, kill what, though I can see them.

They are so dim, but I can see them. I bet it would work better if it was cooler and look at that. It's beautiful wow that was big, see there are three particles alpha beta and gamma, and the biggest ones look at that look at that which are two protons and two neutrons. That's the heaviest part.

These particles come from nuclear reactions and radiations from material around us and from space, Sun and cosmos, and they are organizing, so they could cause cancer shouldn't be smiling for that. Well, their natural amount is so small. They wouldn't cause a problem unless you're exposed to much more levels of radiation that would break your DNA and cause cancer. When those particles pass through the alcohol vapor, they excite the vapor molecules the molecules stick together and condense into a much thicker cloud that we can see.

Okay, let's try again this time, I refroze the water with some salt in it. So hopefully it can stakeholder longer and now we wait. I can see the mist clearly seems it takes so long to start detecting something there. That was it.

I want to try something: I've heard bananas are radioactive, so maybe they provide more all four particles. I don't see much of a difference good, so we can conclude that bananas are safe to eat. We know that smoke detectors contain dangerous radioactive material. Let's see if they affect our reading at all.

This sensor might be quite shielded, though, let's see well too bad, they might have shielded it pretty well, so I can't see anything there either, but if we were to take the radioactive stuff out of it, you would clearly see the lines jumping out of it. Well, it definitely works. Although my cooling surfaces doesn't get super cooled and it's broken, but it's another success story in my books with the proper cooling system and something to cycle alcohol, this would work phenomenally. I guess exactly like the commercial ones they sell out there.
Well, I was curious if I could build it, and I did I love curiosity. Curiosity stream is the first streaming service for documentary. Now you care. There is no one with you in the room - I guess not with over 2400 documentaries and nonfiction titles, including exclusive originals, founded by John Hendrick, the founder of Discovery Channel.

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9 thoughts on “Making a Particle Detector (Cloud Chamber)”
  1. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Tungsten says:

    I've been waiting to find a Davie504 reference! Always nice to see my favorite YouTubers cross pollinating.

    All we need now is a video with Adam Savage!

  2. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Dillon Sterling says:

    Hold the phone, this came out in 2019 and no one has made a remix of him cutting that plexi glass?! …..please someone step up i know not the ways of the remix

  3. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars LutzSchafer says:

    The original Wilson chamber didn't need cooling! He super saturated water vapor with negative pressure. Of course this only works for a second or so

  4. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars crash burn says:

    Very nice! I have plans to build a Wilson cloud chamber from an aquarium and using the high voltage field to show more trails.
    Your Peltier cooling modules are OK, but you should use a double stack setup to get double the temperature change, with ice water.
    You are right about different material being radioactive, Granite, and other rocks contain different sources of radioactive material, and if you put them into your chamber, you can see the trails much better!

  5. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Randy CNY says:

    Love your videos. I think with this one maybe the light from one side rather than both sides might help and a darker room.
    I have to build one of these. I was looking and that's how I saw this video. 🙂

  6. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars That Tassie Wargamer says:

    Maybe just put the ice box into the freezer without the plate assembly but only freeze it down to a slurry rather than hard ice. The slurry may work better.

  7. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Steven Lloyd says:

    I am no engineer(electrical or mechanical) but I am a HVAC Technician. I thought of a improvement on the design for lower temps. Air over heatsinks are no good air has a low heat capacity. My idea would use a small refrigeration circuit to chill a bath of isopropyl alcohol and have the heatsink submerged in the actively cooled alcohol bath. As the alcohol condenses the sub zero plate will be pitched so it will run off directly in to the bath the heatsink is sitting in. Maybe a mini pump and a float switch to recirculate the alcohol to the top of the device to be evaporated again. For the lighting using a laser that projects a flat wide beam would be perfect for this application because no laser light would hit the metal plate as the beam would be parallel to it.

  8. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars Bart De Bie says:

    ORDER OF LENIN USSR ACADEMY OF MEDICAL SCIENCE
    NATIONAL RADIATION MEDICINE
    RESEARCH CENTER

    ACT
    on K.P. Buteyko-s VDBE Method approval (in 1990)
    in accordance with the Cooperation Agreement of January 3, 1990
    between the USSR AMS NRMRC
    and the therapeutic center
    "Buteyko Breathing"
    headed by Candidate of Medicine K. P. Buteyko

    The VDBE Method therapy was tested on 50 patients of the USSR AMSE NRMRC Institute of Clinical Radiology departments and departments of Kiev Shevchenko CRCB with the purpose of identifying the clinical and pathophysiological mechanisms of Buteyko Breathing in persons affected by ionizing radiology in Chernobyl disaster.
    The following results were achieved: hemodynamic, blood test and intestinal system improvements were revealed in 82% of patients. Upon analysis of patients- records and diaries, the following conclusions can be made:
    1. The VDBE method reduces the use of drugs, and in time totally discontinues medication therapy for some individuals.
    2. In multiple therapy, the VDBE method provides improvement of blood and some hemodynamic (blood pressure, pulse) values.
    3. The VDBE method as one of the bracing non-conventional methods does not result in complications or side-effects.
    4. The VDBE Method is further recommendable for rehabilitation of the Chernobyl disaster victims as one of the drug-free therapy components.

    Director,
    Institute of Clinical Radiology
    Prof.
    V. G. Bebeshko

    Senior Researcher,
    Department of Neurology
    A.B. Denisyuk

  9. Avataaar/Circle Created with python_avatars MR.YASWANTH YT says:

    Bananas are 0.00000024 percent radioactive
    Fun fact if you can eat 24000 bananas you will die because of the radioactive
    Hence you will die if you eat more than 100
    So bananas are safe

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