Top Remodel, remodelled with particle physics · 9:24pm Jul 5th, 2023
Continuing my random commentary on Make Your Mark, Chapter 4…
Repurposing an old factory as a public space for the community is a very cool thing to do. Of course, if you ever find a suitable site is available, in a prime city-centre location, with funding available for the renovation costs (or a friendly unicorn with magical powers and an eye for interior design), then every group will be fighting to get their bit of floor space. If you want a cool public science exhibition, you will have to fight against the artists, the musicians, performing arts, museums, and every other cultural group. And usually, the artists win.
I took a trip to Liverpool last week. With this story in mind, I had a vague plan to go down to the waterfront and take a look at the Albert Dock, a group of old warehouses and dock buildings, repurposed into an amazing complex of museums and galleries. However, I was only there for a short time, and ended up spending all my time chatting with friends in various coffee shops, pubs, and restaurants. This tends to happen when I go to Liverpool. It’s a friendly city.
And while praising the cultural venues in the North of England, let me also give a shout-out to the great Science and Industry Museum in Manchester, in an old railway station.
Now, over in Maretime Bay, how could a remodelled episode dialogue go…
Sunny: We should turn this old factory into something new for the whole community!
Izzy: This can be the biggest uni-cycling project I've ever done! And you ponies can help!
Sunny: What do you want to do, Izzy?
Izzy: Should we ask the townsponies for ideas? Then we can be sure it will be exactly what everypony wants?
Sunny: No way. This is your project Izzy. You are doing the work, so you get to decide. In any case, if we ask the townsponies, they will all want completely different things, that won’t go together, and it will be impossible to satisfy everypony.
Izzy: Well… Let me think… I think we should have a particle physics exhibition centre! To show everypony how an accelerator works and the amazing science you can do with one.
Sunny: That’s a great idea!
Izzy: We need a big cloud chamber in the entrance hall. A tank of super-saturated vapour to show the tracks from cosmic rays. And maybe a radioactive source… If we get the lighting right, it will look amazing… Or maybe a spark chamber… Then we want our visitors to walk into a full-scale model of a collider tunnel, which everypony can walk down.
Pipp: Can we have an actual particle accelerator?
Zipp: Where we can smash things together?
Izzy: We should definitely bring in a dipole magnet... And some other pieces… We need a beamline cut open so everyone can see the cross-section. Then we need a way to show the particles colliding… Some electronic simulation to let ponies drive it themselves… Or… I know, I can uni-cycle something from some old splatapults.
Zipp: That’s not quite how particle beam colliders work.
Izzy: But it would be fun anyway. Of course, the best demonstration of a particle accelerator is one with a Van der Graaff generator, some ping pong balls, and a salad bowl…
Sunny: A salad bowl?
Izzy: You paint the balls with conducting paint, then put them in a plastic container with electrodes made from kitchen foil connected to your generator. The ten-thousand-volt potential will mean the balls will pick up a charge, and then be accelerated away from the electrodes. Alternate the positive and ground electrodes to keep it moving… And if it’s in a salad bowl, it will run around in a circle, with the curvature of the bowl providing the function of a magnetic field in bending it round.
Sunny: Those are all amazing ideas Izzy. I’m sure you’ll make a brilliant space where everypony will want to come and hang out and learn about particle physics.
Hitch: And we can still use it for a community centre for town hall meetings to discuss codes and guidelines. Right?
If you make the bowl large enough you can put a metal mesh cylinder in the middle so that people can stand in the accelerator and watch the particles spin round them, like a smaller version of CERN but with visible particles?
Quick question. If instead of firing particles down the accelerating beam, having problems with Doppler shifting down to zero, you fire the particles into the beam so the faster they go the faster it gets hit by higher energy accelerating fields?
This is the wisest thing Sunny has ever said. So—(obviously)—particle physics exhibition!
"Salad bowl particle accelerator" just screams Izzy, doesn't it?
I'm planning on visiting the Maritime Museum in Liverpool, which seems to be right across the dock from the Albert Dock complex. I think I'll have to check it out while I'm there!
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See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mu4m7wSnpD0 for good explanation of how to accelerate particles.
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Yes, the Maritime Museum is part of the Albert Dock. Well worth a visit, but watch out - Liverpool is the sort of place where you go in a shop to buy a bottle of water, and can't escape until you've told the cashier your life story.