This Chamber Detects Subatomic Particles. You Can Make It Yourself. #DIY

whoa that was a long one that was a new one you've seen it I've seen it with my own eyeballs that streak of light you just saw is a muon an elementary particle it came from space and the only reason we can see it is because of Einstein's relativity [Music] hey crazies we have over A Century of evidence to back up Einstein's relativity but the traditional explanations aren't really relatable nobody really experiences relativity in their daily life so there's no basis for comparison to see effects like time dilation or length contraction really fast speeds are required like speeds close to that of light Einstein often used trains in his explanation because they were the fastest form of travel at the time I use rockets in my explanations for the same reason unfortunately trains have gone out of fashion and Rockets are a pretty exclusive thing there just isn't anything to connect with so these explanations come across like trust me bro so how do we fix this problem nuance these muons actually come from space muons from space technically they don't actually come from space space there are these things called cosmic rays which come in and collide with molecules in the atmosphere and that Collision creates Nuance okay so they're not from space they're from the atmosphere right okay since most atoms in the universe are hydrogen it's almost always just a proton okay so a cosmic ray is a proton moving at high speed that's come from the Sun a cosmic ray is really high energy it came from some like distant Supernova or something and it finally got here okay okay it needs more energy than what the sun is putting out yes the sun does send out protons but they're not really like high energy enough for this there's kind of this like Collision Cascade that generates particles which then Decay into Auto particles which then Decay into other particles very common in nature so you're familiar with that familiar with the Cascade the big particle that gets generated in this Decay is muon okay which at first might seem less relatable but you can actually see them yourself like with an experiment at home all you need is about a hundred dollars worth of items you can pick up at your local store a fish tank a piece of felt some glue a couple cooking trays some isopropyl alcohol the higher the concentration the better I use 99 a pair of thick protective gloves these are leather about five pounds or two kilograms of dry ice a decent flashlight and a hammer some of these items are pretty standard household items so if you've got them around you can save some money depending on where you live the dry ice might be difficult to find but I live in Rural America where I can just pick it up at my local supermarket shout out to Meyer hashtag not a sponsor right hashtag do you want to be a sponsor hashtag please sponsor me assembly is pretty straightforward first glue the felt to the bottom of the tank after the glue dries pour some of the alcohol onto the felt not too much you don't want it to be dripping wet just wet but honestly it will work without the felt if you want to skip it it just won't work as well next while wearing the gloves break the ice into pieces and evenly spread it across one of the trays dry ice exposure to the skin can be dangerous so always wear the gloves after you get the ice situated put the second tray on top yep [Music] okay cover the top tray in a thin layer of alcohol and place the fish tank upside down on top now we wait like five or ten minutes not only is the dry ice sublimating into CO2 gas but the coal is also turning the alcohol into a vapor you don't want to be inhaling either of them make sure you do this in a well ventilated area I cracked the garage door I honestly couldn't get this experiment to work very well the first time for some reason but I tried it again the next day and got better results once we've waited long enough turn off the overhead lights and turn on a decent flashlight you should see the alcohol Vapor whisping about when you finally get it working you'll see streaks of light zipping through the vapor those are particles [Music] foreign and you can tell them apart by the kinds of streaks they make for example helium nuclei also known as alpha particles or Alpha radiation are really massive so we expect them to just plow through the vapor in a straight line they also take up a lot of space as far as particles go so their streaks are pretty beefy electrons are a lot less massive so their trajectory is affected more by the collisions they also take up a lot less space than the helium so they make shorter skinnier Jagged streaks muons are like a combination of the two they're more massive like helium nuclei so their streaks should be longer and straighter but they take up less space like electrons so their streaks should be skinny instead of beefy whoa that was a long one that was a new one you've seen it I seen it with my own eyeballs I saw the particles it was very exciting before you go on any further we just want to give a quick shout out to YouTube members no no YouTube YouTube viewer number 2014. that's it YouTube viewer yep number 2014 yep they are a new channel member and they are pledging at the Einsteinium level so they get a shout out thanks so much for your support and if anyone else would like to help support us so that we can continue making these videos please consider signing up for patreon or the YouTube membership now the thing about muons is they're unstable also okay so they're also not going to be around for very long right if you like take all this and average how long you expect of muon to last it's somewhere around 2.2 microseconds that is a quite short we know exactly how many of these muons we would expect to finally make it down here okay which is almost none right the muons got their energy from that original cosmic ray and so they're going to be moving fast as well okay but if they're only around for a few microseconds there's only so far you can go right at 2.2 microseconds we're looking at about 660 meters or 0.4 miles look at them go right and how far up is the outer atmosphere 60 miles it's a surprisingly long distance but definitely not the thickness of the atmosphere it's Fallen very short however more of them Reach the surface of the Earth than we expect like a lot more a lot more like an order of magnitude at least okay we need to be able to explain that like how can something that only lasts on average 2.2 microseconds make it to the Earth's surface right right doesn't make any sense and as it turns out Einstein's relativity helps one of the most well-known aspects of Einstein's relativity is something we call time dilation if some object like a space station or a train or a particle is moving relative to us then its time is passing slower than it is for us that difference becomes more dramatic the closer its speed is to the speed of light let's say this bad boy is traveling at 99.99 the speed of light according to relativity the muon's clock is slower than ours by a factor of about 70. if the muon lasts for the average 2.2 microseconds that would look like 0.15 milliseconds to us that's enough for the muon to travel over 28 miles instead of the 0.4 miles I mentioned earlier which granted is still only half the atmosphere but that 2.2 microseconds is only an average some of them last longer maybe twice as long plus some of them are going faster than 99.99 the speed of light that means some of these muons will reach the ground from our point of view in fact it's exactly the amount we'd expect after factoring in Einstein's time dilation but hold up what does that look like from the muon's perspective there's a pretty fundamental thing that we consider in relativity and that is that while a different Observer is different particles or whatever can make different observations of things like time everyone must agree on which events occur right yes so if from our perspective the muons reach the ground then from the muon's perspective they must also reach the ground which is interesting because so it must be a shorter distance for them yes yeah and so even though for them they're only lasting on average 2.2 microseconds the distance must be shorter right and it is we have this thing called length contraction as well right right the entire Earth along with its atmosphere has length contracted has compressed to a distance that the muon can Traverse in the time that it exists that's wild that's like look at this little baby Earth here right to have a way to actually like see these muons in action right and you actually me see them see them with your eyeballs right not just like you know the figurative use of the word right we created a cloud chamber that was about the size of a you know a small average fish tank and in that little fish tank within an hour we got new ones yeah we got a couple of them yeah if you actually try this it's a lot like watching a meteor shower you think there's going to be all these like you know streaks across the sky but really it's like one every once in a while but they're exciting when you get one yeah there's one very exciting and this is a real life demonstration that we can actually see in our garage you know right with just stuff that we picked up locally right less than a hundred dollars right and we got to see these muons that are living representations of Einstein's relativity yeah which is wild it's wild it's so cool it's very cool of course this isn't a scientifically rigorous experiment or anything in a real experiment we would need to watch a lot longer and record the proportions of each particle and so on there's a process this is more of a demonstration you can actually see the particles yourself but you're not collecting any data the point is a higher proportion of muons reached the Earth's surface than our instincts would expect because of Einstein's relativity from our point of view the muons last longer than they should because their clocks are slower from the muon's perspective the distance it has to travel is shorter because the length contracts in either case the result is the same the muon reaches the ground relativity is real and until next time remember it's okay to be a little crazy quite a few of you commented that us humans are making artificial rings with our space junk there is a lot of junk up there but not nearly enough to make a planetary ring yet anyway thanks for watching foreign

Channel: The Science Asylum

Views: 129,788

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Id: 1plELH0qXhE

Length: 11min 47sec (707 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2023