Watching Nuclear Particles for background radiation
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jrcounts
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Wed Dec 18, 2013 12:34 pm
- Occupation: Student
- Project Question: The cloud chamber is 4 1/2" top, 3 5/8" diameter bottom and 3" sides. Put on 2 lbs. of crushed dry ice. saturated the felt warmed container bottom with hands then waited 20 minutes with no change. construction paper over next 20 minutes developed ice crystals and appear wet/slick. Waited a final 20 minutes with no changes. What do we need to look at to try to get this experiment to work?
- Project Due Date: January 7, 2014
- Project Status: I am conducting my experiment
Watching Nuclear Particles for background radiation
The cloud chamber is 4 1/2" top, 3" sides, and 3 5/8 bottom. For the experiment we saturated the felt, closed the chamber, put 2 lbs of dry ice on the tray. Then used hand to bottom of cloud chamber. 20 minutes later no change. During 2nd 20 minute cycle unknowing came lose from the top. It developed a wet look with ice crystals scattered throughout otherwise no change. No fog again. Tried a 3rd 20 minute cycle for a total of 60 minutes with still no change. Any suggestions what we did wrong or could change to make the experiment work?
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deleted-220204
- Former Expert
- Posts: 17
- Joined: Sun Aug 03, 2014 3:09 pm
- Occupation: Student
- Project Question: Want to be an expert
- Project Due Date: n/a
- Project Status: Not applicable
Re: Watching Nuclear Particles for background radiation
Hello,
Sorry about your bad luck! I'm confused on what you mean by hands. What substance is that? When I created a particle cloud chamber with my group, we used methanol and cooled it with dry ice. So maybe if you try saturating the felt with methanol if you haven't done so already, you might have better luck. If you did use methanol, I'm not sure what's wrong. Maybe the felt is not saturated enough. Try adding more methanol to the chamber even if it looks saturated already so that you can get a methanol cloud. Good luck and ask me any other questions if you have any!
Sorry about your bad luck! I'm confused on what you mean by hands. What substance is that? When I created a particle cloud chamber with my group, we used methanol and cooled it with dry ice. So maybe if you try saturating the felt with methanol if you haven't done so already, you might have better luck. If you did use methanol, I'm not sure what's wrong. Maybe the felt is not saturated enough. Try adding more methanol to the chamber even if it looks saturated already so that you can get a methanol cloud. Good luck and ask me any other questions if you have any!

