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| The Wilson Expansion
Chamber |
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Charles Wilson saw tracks of
single charged particles in his cloud chamber the
first time in 1910. Having studied meteorology and
the formation of water droplets that make clouds, he
started his research on cloud formation in 1894. He
made a chamber filled with water and air where the
temperature could rapidly be lowered by pulling a
piston that caused the air to expand. The water
vapour would condense into droplets along a track of
a charged particle that traverses the chamber at the
right moment. The tracks could be photographed and
with his invention Wilson visualised for the first
time tracks of atomic particles. He received the
Nobel Prize for his invention in 1927.
The Wilson cloud chamber was
used to study different kinds of particles and
interactions for more than 40 years and many
discoveries were made.
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The Nobel
Prize in Physics 1927 - Charles Thomson Rees Wilson
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