For my second independent component, I plan on building a cloud chamber. A cloud chamber was one of the first particle detectors ever built. The positron (anti-matter electron) and the muon were actually found using a cloud chamber. A basic cloud chamber consists of a sealed environment and a supersaturated vapor of alcohol or water (I will probably use methanol.) Charged particles interact with the vapor, ionizing it. After condensation one can start to see "tracks" left by the particles and then you can deduce what they are.
I want to build something a little better than your standard classroom cloud chamber, and I don't want to do it from a kit. Obviously I can't get any kind of radioactive material so it will be more limited in the types of particles it can see. However, I want actual chamber to be fairly large, sturdy, and reliable (so I want it to be VERY much sealed) and this will take time and there will be math involved in building it. Also, when I am finished, I want to make a print of the particle tracks, and then I will identify what they are.
I feel that this will help me answer my essential question because a big part of finding supersymmetric particles is actually building something to find them with. I think that this experiment will give me a taste for the experimental side of physics that I really haven't gotten yet (because obviously I can't build a Large Hadron Collider in my backyard.) Also, this is a good exercise in identifying particles based on what they leave behind, which is how we would identify sparticles if we found them in a particle detector.
Thanks to Professor Sean Carroll from Caltech for this idea!
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