1

I am going to create a simple high school exercise where the students schould calculate the energy from a particle track in a magnetic field. To make the exercise more authentic I am looking for a (maybe historic) high quality image of a cloud chamber of $\alpha$, $\beta^+$ or $\beta^{-}$ particle tracks from a published paper together with a scale and the magnitude of the magnetic field. Since the exercise should be in the context of nuclear physics, the source should be a radioactive decay (not a pair production or...). Different decay examples would be welcome.

I didn't find anything searching the web. However I guess someone knowing the (historic) original papers in this field knows where to look for it. So I am asking for a reference for this.

Qmechanic
  • 201,751
Julia
  • 1,692
  • The track geometry tells you momentum. You can only get from there to energy with some kind of particle ID. Now, in principle you can get particle ID from secondary features of the track, but this is a harder problem than finding the radius of curvature and may not be possible at all with simple instruments. After reading a little more: decay energy alpha all have very short tracks and rapidly changing momenta. You probably can't get a radius from them, but there length and density are fairly diagnostic to the particle type. – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten May 01 '17 at 16:34
  • Assume that they know the charge and the mass, then they could infer also the energy (or did I overlook something?). About the $alpha$ decay: For example this picture here: https://physics.stackexchange.com/a/269001/6581. I guess there a even better pictures (with higher magnetic fields) and where details about the source and field strength are given. But $\beta$ pictures would be a good start. – Julia May 01 '17 at 16:52

0 Answers0