Hardware Hacking

This project is deliberately aimed at developing a very low cost cosmic ray detector using common Fluorescent Tubes. It is based on variation of an experiment performed in 2000 by the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) laboratories by Dr. Schmeling which found a simple method for detecting and visualizing cosmic rays using everyday fluorescent tubes inside a wire mesh of feed with a high voltage. I found information about this on the CosmicRays.org website called a Spark Chamber.

There is another link here at the Teachers CERN Website at the bottom of their page, unfortunately there is little/no information about how this actually works, but it should be fun finding out.

(C) www.cosmicrays.org

I am also building a detector using Geiger–Müller Tubes as a test unit to use as a standard to measure the performance of the Fluorescent Tube Detector against. It will also help resolve some issues identified when using Fluorescent Tubes to fine tune the final design...

Below is what I have done so far: