Cloud Chamber at Exploratorium, San Francisco

[Grundalizer]

Interesting to see the REALLY long ones that take up the whole length of the field of vision, and I saw one that did a half moon U turn. Wonder what those are vs the little ~3-4 inch long ones

[FTWMikeDero]

@Grundalizer the short ones are alpha, the long ones are beta

[philritter21]

I bet not a single kid there cares about this. Shame. I would go there just for it.

[humanidt]

@philritter21 no no, we do love it.

[rastamusic227]

@philritter21 if you know what happends there it would be much and musch more insterestingl. or it doesn't interest you.

[Ormaaj]

Electron particles can curve. Electromagnetism can also curve them

[intemister]

very cool

[uploadJ]

Hmmm ... what would happen if one of those was too go through my computer's CPU chip .... just a thought ...

[Vitomanz]

nothin

[uploadJ]

huh ... Not even toggle a bit or anything like that ... I got some interesting hits when I Googled:

"IBM experiments in soft fails in computer"

[rluna727]

single point upset if you are very unlucky....radiation becomes a problem for computers in a space environment especially LEO

[mexicanerd]

it wold most likely miss any atoms at all and continue through the earth. right now theres millions or billions of nutrinos from the sun coursing through it!

[Ormaaj]

@uploadJ Believe it or not, one of the most common causes of errors in memory is from alpha particles and cosmic rays. They can flip the state of the transistors in your RAM causing soft errors.

[Annie2902]

@Ormaaj oh i ddnt kno that

[mgregggphone]

@Ormaaj Doubtful. Alpha particles should get easily blocked by the outer surface of your skin. Or, by the plastic in the ram chips, or, but the metal/plastic case around the computer.

I'm not saying that you are wrong so much as that you need to cite your sources.

[Exploratorium]

The way you captured the cloud chamber, it looks like a frosty, snow-filled night!

[sunesissociety]

They all look that way.

[goldryder]

how big is it?

[estirling]

Very nice footage.

BTW, the cloud chamber at the Exploratorium uses methanol vapor.

[RexNunc]

holy toledo

[odetoinsolence]

Now that's interesting

[321scratchy123]

Thanx, am using this for teaching my senior Physics class radioactivity as we don't have the gear at our school (still to be approved by the managers). Good simple footage.

[volandovoy5]

how?

[truemartian]

Wow! That is just incredible! I love it!

[KindVapour]

Ahh. to see the un seeable. gotta love it!