What would you do if you and your 16-year-old son were locked up at home?
Well, the first answer may be to build a gaming PC, but now there are too many DIY gaming PC projects, are there other things that are different?
Perhaps, you can try to build a particle detector?
This blogger named Steve Foster happened to see an article on the Internet about the CERN outreach project. The project said, can you build your own particle detector for less than £30? ?
GitHub link: https://github.com/ozel/DIY_particle_detector
However, it feels worth trying?
So, Steve Foster and his son worked together to DIY a particle detector. In the process, he must have encountered some difficulties and fun. Let’s take a look with Digest.
Components to be purchased
In fact, it is not that difficult to DIY a CERN kit. You can order the parts you need on the kitspace. But the question is, can you build it for around 30 euros (27 pounds)?
kitspace link: https://kitspace.org/boards/github.com/ozel/diy_particle_detector/electron-detector/
The price of a single component is naturally less than 30 Euros, but it is obviously not enough to buy a single component. Sometimes you have to buy 10 resistors because they are too cheap. In the end, you may spend 3 penny parts back and forth. For 30 pence. (This trap of consumerism)
Among them, the biggest surprise is that you’d better buy three circuit boards. Actual experience tells you that this will be worth the money, especially if you are not confident in your soldering skills, you can prepare a spare board, just Alpha The detector model can also use the same board.
In general, the cost of all electronic components is almost less than £40. If you want to buy a classic model with a dozen boards, the overall price will be close to 33 GBP/37 EUR per board.
In addition to the above parts, you can also consider purchasing some optional parts.
We bought a cable linking the BNC (connector) and audio jack on Amazon for about £8, because it would be faster, easier and cheaper than building the entire model from scratch.
We also bought some tools that are not in the toolbox. You may prefer to buy a metal box or packaging box for around £6, but I suggest you can use an old jar or similar item instead. We used the display box on the Fossil watch my wife received at Christmas.
In order to install the board in the enclosure, you need some kind of metal bracket. We bought a box of M3 brass brackets on Amazon for about £11, not only in various lengths, but also including all necessary screws and bolts. (120 components, only one is needed!) Then you will also need some shorter connecting wires-about 30 cm in total. (Reminder: If you need to order all these items during the purchase process, then Amazon Prime is definitely worth the money.)
Finally, you need some kind of radioactive source to try the detector. We bought 100 grams of high-purity potassium chloride (KCl) on Amazon for less than £5, which is significantly better than the potassium-rich salt substitutes on Amazon that also have a higher potassium content.
What tools do you need
The parts listed above are all professional parts, and some basic parts should not be forgotten.
Before you start, make sure you have all the tools you need:
- Soldering iron with a small tip and suitable for components and circuit boards
- Desoldering pump and braid (just in case)
- Small cutting pliers for trimming excess wires when soldering components
- Wire strippers to arrange the ends of the wires
- Small multimeter for testing connectors and checking circuit boards
- Nailer for punching holes in an old tin box
- File used to file off the sharp edges of the newly punched hole
- When soldering, it is used to fix circuit boards and components. We are using old wall tiles and hexagonal pencils
Let’s start building a detector!
We spent about 3 hours a day making the circuit boards for about 3 weeks, and maybe another hour to make the case and install the circuit boards inside.
Why is it so long? Well, for a 16-year-old young man, the appeal of this project is very different from that of making gaming PCs. Making gaming PCs is usually more motivated than this project.
Back to normal, we now decide to weld the components in groups. First make the resistor, then make the capacitor, then the semiconductor. The build instructions in the Wiki are very easy to use, just follow the steps.
We tested each connector during soldering, and also tested it from another point on the circuit board to make sure there was no problem with the connection. My son did all the soldering on one PCB, and I started working on the second board, one part was used as a backup board, and the other part could form the basis of the Alpha detector.
(At the same time, I found sadly that these two components are already different assembly structures on the third component R3!)
Here are some shots from different stages of construction:
The first stage
Bottom resistance
Top resistance
second stage
Bottom of capacitor
Capacitor top
The third stage
The bottom of the finished product
Top of the finished product
Fourth stage
Complete detector with switch, battery and connector
Detector test
When testing the detector, the first thing to do is to ensure that there is no short circuit by measuring the resistance on the power connector (skills get! A satisfactory 9.8 kohm), and to ensure that the power has reached the board.
Then we plug it into the PC and turn on the power.
Then we use JavaScript’s pulse detector to check whether it is working properly. I flicked the switch and… There was nothing. Therefore, we checked the circuit board. Some welds looked dry, and on the other one or two welds, we couldn’t be 100% sure whether there was an air gap between adjacent welds, so we had to desolder and remade about 3 welds.
Then, we connected to the PC again and saw a satisfactory pulse when turning the device on and off. When the tin can was moved or when one of us approached the tin can to speak, we also saw a lot of pickups.
OK, then the next step is to try to use a radiation source. I weighed out about 10g of potassium chloride into a plastic cap and placed it under the diode in the detector. Although we did not open a radiation window on the tin lid, the diode is about 1.5 cm above the potassium chloride surface. Then I turned on the detector and hey… there was nothing, not even the on/off pulse displayed.
Seeing that the detector seemed to have no response, I had to disassemble the device and retest the connection with the multimeter, and all the shell connections were OK, and I checked that the shell was properly grounded. I checked whether the battery is connected to every necessary component, and also checked that the battery power is good. After checking this circle, I still didn’t find anything wrong.
But soon, I discovered an intermittent problem. Sometimes, when the device is turned on or off, the JavaScript detector will see a pulse, but nothing is actually being detected. Sometimes you will see noise on the network oscilloscope, sometimes you can’t.
So when I was trying to find out what went wrong, I finally thought that maybe I could try listening to the audio output, which is a trivial thing under Windows.
It really is! After turning on the device, I hear white noise, and every 20-30 seconds, I hear a soft click. Obviously, the detector is working only because of a software problem.
On the importance of an old computer and sound card
I have to say that Oliver Keller worked too hard when trying to make the detector work. There is one thing to say, it’s really important to hear some suggestions about audio connections and sound cards.
GitHub home page with both hands: https://github.com/ozel
The problem is that the sound card (or chip) in modern PCs is too smart. Their main task is to optimize the microphone input of Skype and Zoom, but it also means eliminating signal noise and unwanted clicks that happen to be the detector.
Because modern technology assumes that the detector signal is harmful noise, I need some primitive technology. I have an old laptop, Asus EeePC901, which I bought about ten years ago. Over the years, it has been conscientiously becoming my experimental tool.
For example, I tried to upgrade its RAM to 2GB, and then replaced the ridiculously small 4GB SSD with 32GB. I also upgraded it from Windows XP Home to Windows 10 Home through multiple versions of Ubuntu. You may be surprised that such a machine can run Windows 10 and MS Office, but although it can run, the effect is not good.
Not only that, but I backed it up (virtualized VMWare) and installed a new copy of Lubuntu. I also started the network oscilloscope under FireFox, and at this point we finally have a working detector:
You can clearly see the detector pulse in the screenshot. Noise can sometimes reach peaks and may cause reading errors, but these noises are easy to detect. The false pulse is unilateral, and there is no rebound peak of the real pulse.
From about 25 grams of potassium chloride, I found that the detector has two to three pulses per minute.
So, what’s next?
OK, now that the detector works, what else can you use it for?
Our first plan is to try Python to ensure that we can see and analyze the energy spectrum of KCl correctly, and then we will try various measures to reduce electrical noise. I suspect that the tin will leak a little light inside, but black tape can be used to remedy it.
The third step will be to experiment with the small minerals I collected in the detector-there must be something radioactive there.
The fourth step will be interesting. I wonder if you have heard the old adage that bananas are also radioactive? We plan to prove this by measuring the beta decay rate of a bunch of delicious and potassium-rich bananas!
Please wait and see!
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