Spark chamber

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A spark chamber is a method of detecting cosmic rays, specifically Muon particles. It is a rather primitive method, but is usefull due to it's simplicity and it's low cost to assemble. They consist of several plates in a sealed container, filled with a noble gas. When a charged particle travels through it trigges an electric field, causing sustained electricity to travel through the chamber in the exact path of the particle. These visible electic currents are the "spark" of the spark chamber. Nowadays it is mostly used for demonstrations and such, since there are now many more effecient methods such as Scintillators, Cloud Chambers and Buble Chambers.

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History- The phenomenon of sparks jumping plates in the path of a cosmic ray was first discovered by Keuffel in 1949. In 1953 the first photographs of a spark chamber, in action, were published by Bella and Franzinetti. This greatly increased intrest in the spark chamber, and several improvements were made two years later by Hennings and Bagge. These improvements included using more than two plates, taking stero photographs, and improving the visibility of the spark.

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