Testing Radioactive Materials in the Cloud Chamber 

as for your problem with it not working, i think you're getting heat soak. -30 is barely in the range that you need. try putting insulation around your chamber sides and just film from the top. also put ice in the coolant tank. that alone will probably work. use a thermocouple to check the temperature. that's key. if it's -20, you likely won't see anything. if you can get it colder, like -40, that's when you'll see a lot. instead of using that many, use two lower power peltiers against the cold plate, then higher power peltiers on top of those. they're horribly inefficient so the second peltier has to be a lot higher power to pump its own heat PLUS the heat from the first peltier. this is called a cascade. each peltier can drop the temperature so much. but with two layers, you can get colder. i got mine down to less than -40 by doing this. (it might have been colder but my thermal camera has a maximum of -40c). oh and you're more likely to get a chain reaction if you give the particles a charge. you need a high voltage DC source. the cheap amazon bug zappers can work

The science center in Toronto had a big cloud chamber. It's fascinating to realize we are surrounded by speeding particles. Thanks for this! Great job.

What worked for mine was connecting the hv Modul of a bug zapper to the cloudchamber. Negative to the coldplate and the positive to a metal mesh under the sponges. You can find out the polarity of the hv Modul by hooking it up to an LED.

I enjoy watching you make stuf and figure stuff out! Really cool how you do this from out of the house! I wish you had more frequent posts!! Keep up te good work!

A build a cloud chamber for a univeristy here in spain, that chamber uses one of this rachets to kill flyes, that devices usually has a mini transformer that reaches 3000v or even more depending on the ratchet, we install the rachet grid on top, connected to the positive, and a copper plate in the bottom connected to the negative, that should help to attrack the particles to the mist

Dude! This is AWESOME!!! great job building and testing this!

Отличный опыт! Я как источник использовал старый военный компас. В обычных условиях число на циферблате было меньше 20. Когда я положил компас. Число стало больше 200!!!

"One of my subscribers sent me a box full of radioactive materials" Seems about the right thing to send.

Regarding your problem with the cloud chamber, I have some Ideas as to why it may not be working. Some designs have a high voltage difference between the top and bottom of the chamber to make the tracks easier to see (I think this is to excite the valence electrons of the alcohol vapor but do not quote me on that). Another thing that may help is a leak or some convection in the chamber itself. If the vapor isn't still, it could make the tracks hard or impossible to see, and if there is too much of a temperature difference, convection will occur, and obviously that is not good- this problem may be due to your dual pump change. If vapor is escaping, that cold vapor doesn't have a chance to condense. But most importantly, make sure to have a great day!

I really liked the editing on this video. Great job.

Great video Simon and nice house update :)

very informative and COOOLLL

love the cut to to the ad. So smooth 🤣

You can get thorium from Welding Rods and polonium-210 from Static Eliminators.

Perfectly selected music

I‘m very hyped, this video finally came out! Surely it will be great as always!

This is amazing and very scientific

As soon as I saw you had the chamber out I was thinking about my uranium glass collection. Really glad to see you had a piece. Too bad the chamber didn’t work.

your videos are so good i watch them twice so i can watch all the bits i missed whilst blinking

Väldigt spännande video !!! Hälsningar från Jonathan som träffade dig på en cykeltur i sommars hahaah🥹😆

Would it just be easier to use dry ice instead of peltiers? I mean I like the usablity and ease of having the system always readily available, but honestly having to chill and pump fluid and never being able to achieve those lower temps seems like a lot of moving parts and work. The ice could prolly last you all day. Unless dry ice is hard to come by in your neck of the woods. Our grocery stores and welding shops have it here in Montana.

I wonder what would happen to a cloud chamber in a basement? Here in PA we're supposed to set up radon detectors to alert us in case of excessive radon.

I love how original and funny the guy from this video is :)

Good job on the new house&garage, and girl offcourse!

Yeah🎉 welcome back 😂 nice video👌

Great decision to make reviews on a different channel. Just subbed to it

I have no idea what I am seeing here, but it sure is beautiful!

you should try making a MHD underwater thruster seems like something right up your alley

Superbra avsnitt 😀👍🏻

im from the usa and i love u vids keep up the good work

Considering that americium-241 has a half life of 432 years or so, one can assume that your geiger counter doesnt detect alphas. Geiger tubes sensitive to alphas have a thin mica window.

I have an old marine pocket watch from my grandpa from the 1930-1940. i used to hold it in front of a Geiger counter in school. There was a very high count rate. Since then, I also want to build such a device to just see if I can see something. Since I know that the radioactive material could decay into radon gas I store the clock outside...

Finally, I see channel growth YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!! XD

My 2 cents is that you need 2 gases, something for the particle to pick up and drag it around pure alcohol vapor, it like changes from humid to misty, so i would try co2, room relative humidity, etc in different concentrations

In my professional scientific opinion it's... Gremlins! Great video. Keep up the good work.

Very nice 👍👍🙂🙂

I have a bunch of clocks and watches that are pretty radioactive from the radium. The reason radium is dangerous is because your body treats it like calcium and deposits it in your bones if you end up ingesting any particles by accident(or inhaling them). So as long as they're sealed up, its generally safe. The worst one I have no longer glows, and it still puts out 42,000CPM.

Awesome.

I don't know much about cloud chambers, but just an idea: You are using alcohol, right? Is it possible that it evaporates over time and since it is probably not pure alcohol, the water content rises. So if you refill it, it gets less concentrated over time

A GQ GMC-600+ will give you a very satisfying alpha reading.

cloud chambers are cool af

You look so much like a living version of your 3D version of you. I cannot unsee it 😂

Beta and alphas don’t penetrate a lot because they’re larger and or have a larger magnetic effect on the material they’re going through, therefore they lose energy quicker and do not penetrate so far. Gammas and neutrons penetrate pretty far since they have a low mass, or no mass at all, and no charge as well meaning they have to physically hit something to lose energy which is less likely due to their size. They can have an effect on something without hitting it however it’s not in the sense of magnetic forces it’s more of a nuclear force. Also physical contact for something like a gamma is determined on its spin and the spin of whatever its hitting so an electron with a -1/2 spin and a gamma with a -1 spin means the gamma won’t be absorbed where as if the gamma had a 1 spin it would be or if the electron had a 1/2 spin it would absorb the gamma. That’s why the objects that only produce beta and alpha particles don’t seem radioactive, you just need a radiac that is made to measure these larger massed and charged particles. Geiger counters are most commonly used because alphas and betas aren’t really a threat to people. Alphas are stopped by the layer of dead skin on your body and betas are stopped by clothing and don’t penetrate your body very far. Neutrons, electrons, and gammas are the ones that can cause serious problems at high doses which is why Geiger counters are great. A cool fact is that smoking tobacco exposes your lungs to alphas which is why lung cancer is so common in smokers and alphas do 40 times more damage than a neutron. The more you know. Also a lot of radiacs are calibrated where 100cpm is considered radioactive or higher than background. Not sure what yours is calibrated at but in my line of work 100 cpm is a pretty bad day especially if you see it spike to 200 cpm. Real bad day.

i think your issue with the tracks might be able to be solved with high voltage connected to the plate. It helped me and that might explain why rubbing a pool noodle causes it to work again (static)

Cloud chambers are super cool! Is the chamber grounded? Should it be? Since fluffy things cause it to work again it seems like you're probably building up and wiping away charge. Could be caused by flowing water in your cooling system.

I have seen a cloud chamber with a electric field between the bottom to the top. You can search in this direction I think.

Have you tried using Methanol instead of Ethanol in your cloud chamber? Last time I used a cloud chamber I remember methanol creating a thicker vapour than alcohol. (Although this was almost 20 years ago and we were using dry ice to cool the methanol.)

6:58 "its so low radioactivity.... " the women painting the dials when they were produced that way (you had bigger ones for alarm- and wall-clocks too) often got ill. they licked the brushtips to get them into shape before painting.. the more you know..

no entendí absolutamente nada, pero igual es fascinante ver todo esto!

I noticed that there is a motion of the alcohol vapor from the back lights to the front. This could maybe be a convection current caused by the minimal but still existent heat from the lights.

that metal rod you're using to push in the samples may be discharging the vapor/liquid ions. use an insulated or acrylic rod?

Less goo he has posted😅

Very good son, I hope they can help you with the potential problem.

You were holding the radioactive items up to the battery . The geiger tube is an m4011 ,it's glass and it is perpendicular to the battery, look though the vents on the back of the geiger counter and you can see the geiger tube.

Very cool I collect green glass

nuckin futs!

yeah, as other have said, you need a high voltage metal mesh above your cold plate.

Well the sounds of any as though the case had a charge that was influencing the end result but as far as I am already see him button you're going to need to make a holder keep that eyeball tasting the vapor otherwise it just points up

there are some counters that can't do alpha particles. some do, but require you to open a door. some have a slider switch that changes the material covering the geiger tube for the three particle types. the one you have is probably just blocking alpha via the plastic shell

And now Simon SÄPO and Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten will knock at your door🤣

On your GMC-320 you are confusing the battery for the scintillator. It's on the side of the unit behind those airvents...

Put some magnets in the chamber to see if you can bend the paths of the charged particles.

If there's anything related to static electricity I think that it could be a cool project to share with @ElectroBOOM 😁

7:00 "it's considered harmless" _the radium girls would like to know your location_

If the static electricity dont work it might be due to the moisture in the air in summer, especially at "röten". Wait until winter....

Try using 99.9% ACS Reagent Grade Isopropyl Alcohol for saturating the vapor chamber.

I have the same giger counter and I have 4 pieces of americium from smoke detectors and it detects well over one thousand cpm you also don't need to open the part where the battery is just use bottom middle of the counter as it is right in the middle where the gas tube is and will detect more of the radiation that way while the part where you had it at was close to the tube it not a lot of radiation was able to be detected because most of it was flying off and not getting into the tube.

cool

So what happens to those particles flying off. Do they evaporate or just go off and travel forever? And if they don't fade away is there any material or set of containment fields that can reflect them and bounce them around inside an object to make electricity?

7:30 but if we do a little "radioactive boy scout role-playing" ☢️😋

Could the humidity or air pressure changes course it not to work

There is a movie called Radium Girls which tell about the women who helped to make those radioactive watch hands. Some of them died when making it.

Apparently the old travel clock with radium dials i have is way WAY more radioactive than i thought. or the detector i used is way more sensitive.

What voltage and amperes are u using to power the peltiers

Jag demonterade en elektrisk flugsmälla och kopplade den till ett nät under den kalla skivan och andra polen till ett nät uppe under glaset. Funkade riktigt bra.

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FINALLY ANOTHER VIDEO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it hurts when it's so long between videos

Its about the moisture content and barometric pressure..

The cut to pcbway lol 😂

You should try prusament new Tungsten material It is supposed to be like a radioactive shield

I remember watching you to learn how to do a proper 3D lythophane.. ... nice mustache .. and Great job kid

Yes.

You look like Garand Thumb's "special" brother on the thumbnail

what light source you use

Very cool video, but update on electric boat?

Any chance you can secure a Rolex or other watch that used Radium for it's luminous face to use with your table? Radium has a half life of about 1,600 years, so I imagine any watch made with it would still be emissive?

Use A grounding clamp to hold item. Make sure you ground it to earth.

hahahaha nice joke about the garage, saludos from Argentina

Geiger counter does not react on alpha and betta particles.

Simon can you link your other channel to the featured channels on you RU-vid channel? It's easier for people to find this way

I wish i had a big brain, but you didn't show us a temp sensor in this video. Do you have one of those laser temp sensors? Check it when it works good, and check it when it doesn't work. NEW HOUSE!!!! This is the third time you moved on this channel isn't it? lolz. I love your projects, and hope we see many more. Your other project, the surfer, you aren't a silver surfer, but maybe the Swedish surfer..ahahahahah

Next video will be "DIY Nuclear Reactor". Cant wait to see his face on the news 😂

How can the particles randomly turn so sharply? Why don't they all move in a straight path?

you geiger doesn't detect Alpha, you need the GMC-600+. or Even go for a radiacode 102 which is a scintillator, you can have fun with gamma spectroscopy!

Careful with those watch dials...the poor girls who painted those dials back in the day got terrible radiation poisoning which led to terrible illness, injuries, and even death. One probably won't affect you, but always good to be careful...

That model detector can’t pick up Alpha radiation. The Am241 should be screaming if u have the right Geiger.

8:40 and we wonder why people used to call science magic XD

Magnets on outside to attract particles !!!!!........😮

Please use a High pass filter on your voice over sound mix, your voice is either really boomy or you use a Rode mic lol

Alpha and beta particles in earths atmosphere will typically be a small percentage (like 5% to 15%) of the speed of light. Beta tend to move slightly faster. Speed can greatly vary tho. The chamber temp is probably the reason for you problem. I almost guarantee the pads you were using have degraded from use and possibly amp overdraw.

Of course it is,