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March 29, 2006

Physics

Department shows chamber prototype

It hopes to build the world’s largest cloud chamber, a device to observe particles.

Story by: A.J. Eaton

Contributor to The Shorthorn

Hoping to build the world’s largest cloud chamber, the Physics Department displayed a prototype at San Angelo University.

Physics junior Heather Brown showed the university’s cloud chamber, a machine made to detect cosmic rays, at the Society of Physics Students Texas section’s spring meeting that took place Thursday through Saturday. Brown volunteered to demonstrate the chamber to students and physics teachers from across the state at the symposium.

“Our main goal in showing the prototype is to get more interest in it so we can build the world’s largest cloud chamber,” she said. “We’re tired of using the dry ice and alcohol. We’d like to use cooling chips to make it perpetual, but they’re kind of expensive, so that may be further down the line.”

Physics senior Jacob Smith said the cloud chamber uses dry ice and alcohol to form a gas cloud that makes tracks of cosmic rays and charged particles, including solar rays and other particles from space, visible to the naked eye.

“The cloud chamber helps us view invisible particles that bombard our bodies at 200 particles a second every day,” he said. “The [society] awarded an undergrad research grant to the university’s chapter here to build the prototype based on a proposal by physics students to build the world’s largest cloud chamber here at UTA.”

The meeting in San Angelo also allowed physics professor Suresh Sharma an opportunity to present his ideas for the fall meeting’s events, which will be held at the university in October.

Physics Chair James Horwitz said the cloud chamber and the fall symposium are excellent tools for teaching.

“The fall meeting is going to be great,” he said. “The last meeting I attended, there was a demonstration where someone inhaled helium, which makes your voice real high like Mickey Mouse. Then someone inhaled sulfur hexaflouride, which sounds poisonous — but it’s not — and it drops your voice real, real low. It was a lot of fun.”

The meeting will include various presentations from renowned physicists in different areas of expertise including space, low temperature and high-energy physics and will host around 500 visitors and feature lectures and shows in the new planetarium at the Chemistry and Physics Building.

CORRECTION

The article should have stated that the department displayed the prototype at Angelo State University.