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Mechanically refrigerated permanent exhibits. Photo courtesy of The Science Place.

Oversized cloud chambers reveal frequent background events.
The sensitive volume of our Lecture Hall Chamber, for example, is about 900 times that of the common “petri dish” cloud chamber. In a chamber this large, natural background events create a continuous parade of droplet tracks. Your students will find this quite stunning.

Introduce modern physics with a memorable display
Use our diffusion cloud chambers to visually present atomic and nuclear processes. Reduce the amount of information your students blindly accept by providing real time demonstration of individual charged particle interactions with matter.

Promote student discussion of environmental radiation.
Show that ionizing radiation permeates everything around us. Cosmic rays pass through all living things, creating genetic change. Radon gas accumulates in many structures; it and its progeny decay in our lungs. These sources are easily distinguished in our oversized cloud chambers.

Show your students how radiation is absorbed.
Differentiate between tracks produced by artificial sources including alpha, beta, gamma, and X-ray. Each type interacts through different physical mechanisms, and our manual describes these in detail. Your students will notice that alpha particles are stopped by a few cm of air, and use external absorbers to observe the penetrating property of gamma rays.