Americium and Fiestaware Fragment in Peltier Cloud Chamber

[florinandrei]

Is there a way to reduce convection? This is beautiful, but the tracks are moving around pretty quickly.

Maybe put a transparent comb-like structure inside the chamber, to create smaller cells and (hopefully) less convection?

[spambutcher]

@florinandrei if you look at my video":Peltier Could Chamber / No Dry Ice (slow motion)"

you can see I've changed the design a bit - the flat bottom seems to help a little

[justDIY]

great work! looks like you have a lot of high energy particles blasting around there too, with the faint tracks that are appearing at odd angles.

[digdugdiggy]

So the Americium is like spraying out electrons and protons? I have taken college chemistry 1, but its atomic number is only 95. Where do all these radiation particles come from?

[spambutcher]

@digdugdiggy americium is a strong alpha (helium nucleus) emitter as it decays into neptunium. I think the big trails are alpha - and the little trails are beta (electrons) - not 100% clear on their source. Americium has an atomic -weight- of 241 - so it's actually heavier than uranium.

[bdhalbert]

@spambutcher The decay chain does include a beta decay: Am -> Np -> Pa -> U-233, with Pa -> U releasing a beta particle. However, the half life on the Np -> Pa decay is very long, so I bet most of the above are secondary reactions from the alpha bombardment of oxygen or nitrogen molecules in the chamber.

[spambutcher]

@bdhalbert I ran the numbers just for fun - assume 1% of the americium (half life of 432 years) has decayed to 237Np (half life of 2 million years - alpha decays to 233pa) 233pa which actually emits the beta only has a half life of 27 days - so I'll call that instant decay... works out to around 450k alpha decays for each beta decay. So - I bet you're right… Would be interesting to see if polonium (which alpha decays into stable lead) also throws off betas…

[mace1337]

Mesmerizing!

[MrMicromeow]

that's completely an awesome build ! very nice track quality tbh !