Theory behind the project.

Before the era of computers and detectors, the only way to detect the paths of elementary particles was to use cloud chambers. A cloud chamber is a closed system containing air that is saturated with alcohol. Applied to this system is a heat gradient usually done by cooling the bottom with dry ice and leaving the top at room temperature. Usually alcohols are solids at -80 (temperature of dry ice), but due to this gradient they do not solidify in the air and are cooled way below their freezing point and thus termed "supercooled". This supercooled alcohol becomes very sensitive to minute disturbances and can condensate in mid-air. Scientists discovered that this was a very useful method for visualizing the trajectories of charged particles: electrons, muons and alpha-particles. While primitive nowadays, cloud chambers were an integral step in the early particle physics experiments.

Particle trajectories and interactions visualized via cloud chamber.