Cloud Chamber
Add To Your Report
- Measure the length of the particle tracks in your video of the thoriated rod. Calibrate your measurements using the measured length of the thoriated tungsten rod. You should have 20-40 track lengths – you don’t need to use every track from your video. ImageJ is a great tool for this task. It’s a free download. If ImageJ won’t open your AVI, reach out to Dr. FitzGreen – you may be missing a default plugin somewhow.
- Make a histogram of measured track lengths. Use a bin size that will result in 10-20 bars in your histogram.
- Compare that histogram with the energy spectrum of thorium (and it’s decay chain daughters). Can you make the argument that your histogram of measured track lengths is a good indication of the energy spectrum of alpha particles from Thorium decay?