Cosmic music | Devpost

A view inside the chamber (there are some lens artifacts in the image)
Trying to use a blanket to get a good contrast to see the trails
The cloud chamber with a banan in there
A slight mist can be seen to the left of the banana
The cloud chamber chilled down to -79C
GIF
We had some dry ice and a pancake

Table Number 37 (Atrium)

Inspiration

Having nearly completed an Astrohphysics degree along with seeing a cloud chamber at CERN, we were inspired to build one. We also enjoy computer vision along with music sythesis. So, coupling these ideas with a Physics based project was the perfect combination.

What it does

When you cool alcohol vapour to a very cold temperature, it reaches a point of supersaturaturation. This means that it wants to condense but cannot, and remains in gaseous form. However, it is very unstable to any disturbance. So, when galactic radiation passes through the vapor it condenses, showing its path - making something that is invisible, visible. Using computer vision we can track these paths and create music from it, by passing the coordinates of the streaks of gas into a synth.

How we built it

We have been through several iterations of testing, but we found this set up to be the most effective. We used a pizza steel as a heat spreader to interface between the dry ice and the chamber. The chamber was made out of a clear plastic tub with a plasticine seal to stop the IPA vapor from escaping. The dry ice is on a foam insulator to prevent too much heat gained from the bottom. There is an LED strip to illuminate the alcohol mist and see the trails. We also put a banana in there due to the radioactivity from the potassium, hoping to observe a decay.

Challenges we ran into

The first heat spreader we used was too thin and didn't have enough thermal mass. It also warped very badly which caused the plastic chamber to not seal properly. So, one of our team mates had a pizza steel (well iron) at home so we used that which worked a lot better at both retaining its temperature and not warping. Even still, we disappointingly didnt get as many detections as we would've liked, so we wouldn't get as many notes as we would've wanted to make some proper music.