• Question: What 's the coolest device you've built for your experiments

    Asked by anon-254590 to NuclearJames, Jessica on 14 May 2020. This question was also asked by anon-257412.
    • Photo: James Smallcombe

      James Smallcombe answered on 14 May 2020:

      One of my favourite is an ion detector called TRIFIC.
      It uses grids of 20um thick (about the size of a hair) gold-plated tungsten wires.
      Looking through all the wires looks really cool, I dont know if you can see this photo https://imgur.com/a/iXQ7zCx 
      The space between the wires is filled with gas and atoms from our experiment travelling about 10% the speed of light ionise this gas. The grids are used as electrical anodes and cathodes to collect the ionised gas atoms and electrons and make a signal.
      From the spread of ionisation we can work out the element (oxygen, carbon, etc) of each individual ion, at a speed of 1 million per second.

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