Bubble Chambers:Art United With Science
Window Into How Nature Organizes Energy
A bubble chamber is a vessel filled with a superheated transparent
liquid (most often liquid hydrogen) used to detect electrically charged
particles moving through it. It was
invented in 1952 by Donald A. Glaser, for which he was awarded the 1960
Nobel Prize in Physics.
Bubble chambers are similar to cloud chambers, both in application and in basic principle. It is normally made by filling a large cylinder with a liquid heated to just below its boiling point. As particles enter the chamber, a piston suddenly decreases its pressure, and the liquid enters into a superheated, metastable phase. Charged particles create an ionization track, around which the liquid vaporizes, forming microscopic bubbles. Bubble density around a track is proportional to a particle's energy loss. Bubbles grow in size as the chamber expands, until they are large enough to be seen or photographed. Several cameras are mounted around it, allowing a three-dimensional image of an event to be captured.
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