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Particle tracks are captured on film in Fermilab's bubble chamber in 1978. (Image courtesy Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory)
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This article originally appeared in the Fall 2014 issue of Inquiry, the biannual publication produced for University of Chicago Physical Sciences Division alumni and friends.
Early exposure
A precursor to the liquid argon time projection chamber shows particles in motion.
Invented in 1952 by Donald Glaser, for which he won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physics, a bubble chamber is a tank filled with pressurized, superheated transparent liquid, often hydrogen or a hydrogen-neon mix. Just before an accelerator beam enters the chamber, the pressure is reduced, and the charged particles boil the liquid, forming bubbles along their paths, which curve in a magnetic field, allowing researchers to study particle momentum.