I still dream of having my own cloudchamber one day, hackaday and Cloudylabs shows some excellent DIY examples.

[William Gaatjes]

A very simplified explanation : A cloud chamber is a box with super saturated air, AKA fog. What happens if a particle with enough energy hits one of the atoms in that super saturated air, a trail becomes visible in that fog. And since the fog is in a cubic box, one can see the trail in 3D : An X-Y-Z path.
It is great to see. And really fun. With such a cloudchamber, a person can see how much radiation is truly present around us. Of course it is very low. Such a cloud chamber near a radiactive source, creates a sort of chaotic collection of trails resulting in a large spot.

cloud chamber – Hackaday

hackaday.com

Cloudylabs » Phase-change cloud chambers

www.cloudylabs.fr

 

[Jimminy]

Such particles are called ionizing radiation because of the wave matter duality, if i am not mistaken.

I thought the term only means they have enough energy to allow electrons to become unbound (ionization). But I might be wrong.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I thought the term only means they have enough energy to allow electrons to become unbound (ionization). But I might be wrong.

You are right. I will edit the text and explain it better another time.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Another nice video with a cloud chamber demonstration from Harvard Natural Sciences Lecture Demonstrations

 

[William Gaatjes]

A cosmic ray visible in a cloud chamber.
Cosmic rays are nuclei, like protons and atomic nucleus that travel through space at high velocity and therefore through the solar system and also through our atmosphere and perhaps even through our bodies.
Sources can be varied, but the sun is a good example.

Cloudylabs cloudchamber video with different sources of radioactive radiation :

 

[William Gaatjes]

Make your own cloud chamber in a sort of very easy way compared to the other examples in this thread :

 

[William Gaatjes]

It is a bit of topic with respect to cloud chambers, but not entirely. Because to create a cloud, seeding material must be present. And in cloud chambers, we see ionizing radiation in sort of fog...
And in this interesting article from Arstechnica once again it comes clear how important trees are. IMHO, cutting forest to make bioethanol is not the way. Better try to salvage the overproduction of methane produced in swamps and marshes. Which are very common in South America.
The largest marsh can be found in South America. If only we could capture some of that overly abundant naturally produced methane without harming nature... Which inspiring group of young people can come up with an Earth saving idea ?

A revelation about trees is messing with climate calculations

Scientists are learning more about “sesquiterpenes,” vapors made from trees.

arstechnica.com

 

[William Gaatjes]

A great interesting article from Arstechnica about the highest energy cosmic ray ever found.
Cosmic rays are nuclei with or without electrons that travel at high velocity.
Cosmic rays are also a very difficult subject because of the existence of primary cosmic rays and secondary cosmic rays.

Some background information i gathered and came to suspect over the years :
There are scientists that believe that the cosmic rays and all the showers of energetic particles the Earth receives, are also very important for the climate that we have.
Perhaps even that these cosmic rays determine the path of lightningstrikes by pre-ionizing the air. We all know that there is a very strong electric field between the Earth and the Ionosphere.

I personally believe that a part of the enormous amount of individual protons and electrons we receive daily from the sun from the solarwind : Are captured at the magnetic poles.
We also know of existence of the Birkland currents at the poles, flowing along the magnetic fieldlines. For more background information, read about the Norwegian scientist : Kristian Olaf Bernhard Birkeland.

Okay, let us continue !
We got a proton and 1 electron, that can combine to : Hydrogen. And 2 hydrogen atoms and 1 oxygen atom combines to 1 watermolecule.
So, the water at Earth, does not only have to come from meteorites or asteroids that hit the earth in the past.
No, the elements needed for water are possibly replenished at the magnetic poles because the sun is constantly providing us with the raw materials as particles.
Which are combined perhaps by small bacteria high up in the air. There is a lot of ionized oxygen there, ozone and hydrogen.
All energized by the sun electromagnetic radiation like for example the UV part.

So we know the sky is divided in several sections called spheres.
I had to look this up :
From low altitude to high altitude.
1 [0-10km] - Troposphere.
2 [10-30km] - Stratosphere.
3 [30-50km] - Mesosphere.
4 [50 - 400km] - Thermosphere + (above 80km)Ionosphere.
5 [> 400km] - Exosphere + Magnetosphere.

Perhaps in one of these spheres, the creation of watermolecules takes place. Perhaps by bacteria flowing high above or just naturally through physics.


As a side note :
This all may also be a small part of the explanation about what happened at Mars.
The difference between Mars and Earth is that Mars no longer has an active magnetic field.
So, no particles can be captured and guided away.
From the cloud chamber videos, we can see the effects a magnetic field has on charged particles.
We also know the effect electric fields have on charged particles.

Anyway, enjoy reading the article :

Meet “Amaterasu”: Astronomers detect highest energy cosmic ray since 1991

The Telescope Array in Utah’s West Desert picked up a rare particle with 244 EeV energy.

arstechnica.com

 

[William Gaatjes]

These videos are fun to watch to learn from how much influence high voltage and electric fields have on every day life.

But if you really desire to repeat these experiments and setups, beware of free radicals like for example ozone can generate, high voltage setups are known to generate ozone. Ozone is a molecule made up of 3 oxygen atoms , so O3.
Free radicals are highly reactive oxygen molecules that are known to be dangerous to life like for example us humans.
The immune system of our bodies even uses free radicals to destroy pathogens, but in a very controlled manner, it is not like we need to breath in ozone...
So, use in open air or use in a ventilated room.


As a sidenote :
I once read that for example that the electric field strength between the Earth and the Ionosphere changes with around 100V/m.
From the ground up into the sky but beware of the various layers of air and humidity and air composition and local ionization because of seeded clouds, created in supersaturated air holding more "water" than should be possible at that "measured" temperature. This all can be called the so called dielectric of a capacitor.

The earth and the Ionosphere can be seen as a large spherical capacitor with two plates.
And where the Earth itself is one electrically conducting plate and the ionosphere the other electrically conducting plate.
End sidenote.

Have fun with these videos, to learn how to make your own cloudchambers to see the electrical effects of charge and the effects of atomic particles flying through the air around us and also through us.

 

[William Gaatjes]

The Action Lab has a nice video about cloud chambers and doing experiments like Ernest Rutherford did.