Applied Science - 2020-09-21
A special 100nm thick window allows 25 KeV electrons to pass from a vacuum tube to the atmosphere where they hit a fluorescent screen -- a CRT in air! Shielded GoPro goes through a powerful electron beam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPMpAR9w-L0 More powerful amateur electron beam in air: https://fusor.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=7828 Deep technical resource on dielectric charging via electron bombardment: https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a172204.pdf Tons of information on industrial e-beam processing: http://iiaglobal.com/uploads/documents/Industrial_Radiation_eBeam_Xray.pdf KF25 to glass tube quick adapter: https://www.idealvac.com/SWIFT-SEAL-KF-to-Compression-Port-Adapter/pp/P103772 100nm silicon nitride windows: https://www.tedpella.com/grids_html/silicon-nitride-x-ray-windows.htm More windows: http://www.temwindows.com/category_s/22.htm Tritium light sources (eBay removed most): https://usa.banggood.com/search/tritium.html E-beam crosslinking: https://ebeamservices.com/polymer-crosslinking/services/plastic-parts/ KF25 cross $18 on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CKS3H99 Lightbulb sockets: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07SSYN83Y/ Hysol 1C: https://www.amazon.com/Loctite-HL1373425-1373425-Hysol-1C/dp/B000B631G8 Applied Science on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/AppliedScience
Could you post-accelerate the electrons after they come through the window?
Or ramp up the power after the electrons exit, even if not collimated?
@Krenon Except breathing
@pizzablenderThis already exists. The electron beam triggered spark gap is used when low jittering is needed. While not as good as the leader triggered spark gap, it tends to be cheaper.
Be careful you don't get carried away: https://youtu.be/fRbbq6MIP_E
@HenriFaust lol not likely
I don't know of any other channels that do what you do. You have underrated videos.
Ben is one of a kind, but you can check out tech ingridients, thought emporium, cody's lab. Action lab doesn't usually do these long projects, but has many small but amazing physics experiments.
no one has a setup like this guy
OMG you built a Lenard tube! I've always wanted to do this. Amazing as always, so glad to finally see a good video about this. If you do ever want to mess with higher voltages, look at a linear potential drop accelerator. Can be powered by a standard cheapo van-de-graff generator (they're also called van de graff accelerators for that reason) and you've already got all the stuff to build it basically. I suspect you could get the lichenberg figures working that way. Also on the list of things I've always wanted to build
> yeast batteries
@stdorn personal crackpot theory: all batteries ARE bio batteries, infected by deep-earth nanobacter, "electrobacteria" organisms which produce unnoticed nanoscale biofilms on metals. If I'm right, then a truly sterile battery should not work. (But for hyperthermophiles, high rads won't sterilize, autoclaves won't sterilize. How to sterilize a metal battery plate, if the usual organisms breed in superpressure water far above 100C, and commonly live inside nuke reactor cores, causing fuel-rod corrosion? See, batteries ALREADY might be biological.)
You know its depressing when you realize there will never be a day where you understand this information. They live in a completely different universe.
> how could i make one starting with a crtv?
@martin11844 Uhh, thin the faceplate with conc. hydrofluoric acid? :)
@wbeaty i read the description of the video, the comment of the thought emporium, and your comment, and it all makes sense now i will try to get the real deal of what did you said to get to now the best way of doing it
@martin11844 Normal crt faceplates are 1cm or 2cm thick. Instead find a very thin crt, like those cheap russian ILD3-L tubes https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=ild3-l&_sop=15 , or try an old Heathkit oscilloscope fifty bucks.
Or just eBay buy a cheap crt tube alone, such as LO-247, 3LO1I, 3BP1, 3AQP1, 5AQP1, etc. (Avoid using HF acid, that was a joke. HF acid isn't available, and also, lethal HF = dead hobbyist.)
Would love to see you expose a micro SD card to the beam (or some other array type device), I wonder if you could attempt to make a cool but completely useless image sensor out of it (although I suspect the wear leveling to be a problem on modern ones).
Connecting a metal plate to an analog ammeter and to ground and moving it around in the beam would also be a really simple but cool demo.
I also wonder if considering this thing is putting out a good watt or two of radiation (might have to crank it up a little for this work) I wonder if you could put the aerogel (or some other low thermal conductivity material) into the beam and then cross section it while filming with a thermal camera, I would expect to see an interesting pattern as the beam is absorbed by the material heating it.
I also see a lot of people are suggesting a cloud chamber, I would love to see that as I don't really know what kind of trails this thing would make.
Just a NAND memory chip would be a better "ghetto image sensor" - assuming the electrons can make it through the packaging. MicroSDs would have the same exact issue though.
@Гугл Говно nobody in the ghetto is making imaging sensors
Very interesting experiment is when the chunk of plexiglass (acrilyc glass) exposed to electrons with energy about 5MeV. Electrons stucks in plastic and then when you pin it through with some grounded sharp thing, electrons are drain through this thing to ground and you get a little lightning inside that draws a 3D Lichtenberg figures.
UPD: Oh! There is in video about it. )
@Twizted Cheese that depends of what the ghetto!)))
@Гугл Говно you can sand the packaging and the die itself if that wold help. It's called die lapping in extreme overclocking. They sand it thinner and mainly flatter for better thermal transfer.
If you shoot anhydrous ammonia with it, can you dissolve the electrons in it and see a color change as they become solvated?
... but if there is any worthwhile knowledge acquired from immersing all in NH3, then bombardment via electron, it's to prove the idea that the blue color observed when the lithium hits the NH3 really is free electrons in solution, and not some other hitherto-undisclosed phenomena
What about charge balance? You'd have no counter cation. I'm guessing it would just build up a static charge and stop long before any color can be seen.
I was also reminded of the solvated electrons. Lol I was curious if you were to try to measure the voltage of it, what would happen if anything?
Thunderf00t already proved the blue bronze color was solvated electrons when he electrolyzed molten caesium chloride
@Glenn Bartusch NOPE. WW needed Methylamine, so he was using a P2P to Imine reaction.
I always marvel at your videos, but the comment section.. it's amazing how great community you've gathered on a platform none other than youtube. It's a pleasure to read these comments with so many insights and good questions. Your channel is like a microverse of curiosity, such a lovely place.
Hehe, butts.
But no in all seriousness I absolutely agree, wonderful channel and a wonderful mature insightful community! :-)
Loved it Ben. Next stop: demonstrate the wave character of the electron by placing a dual slit in the beam and a phosphorus screen behind it. Though, I must admit this experiment is a way more difficult than it sounds...
yeah its difficult becaus you need very narrow slids very close together right?
What is the wavelength? Yesterday, we made a microscope slide covered in candle soot and two needles taped together to create the slits. Worked. But that was a red laser (620nm?).
Would be better done inside a vacuum chamber. Maybe using the electron microscope?
@TheRainHarvester wavelength is indeed the problem. The wavelength is equal to the Planck constant divided by the particle momentum. With an electron, the wavelength will quickly be in the Angstrom range or lower. So using two needle scratches is not going to do the trick I'm afraid.
Claus Jönsson did that in 1961. It's been very difficult as the resulting interference pattern is extremely tiny even if you use sub-micrometer slits
I really appreciate how this channel is filmed and edited. It's high quality without being gimmicky and slick like so many other YouTube channels, which makes it easier to focus on the content and not the presentation (the lack of background music is especially refreshing).
I’m a user of Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, which has a 12GeV electron beam. Each aluminum ‘window’ is several millimeters thick to hold back the atmosphere, and so the beam traverses several centimeters of aluminum without losing much energy at all.
For those who are interested the Bethe formula describes the energy loss of a charged particle passing through matter.
How deeply does it penetrate into say, a finger?
Somehow that has fixated in my mind as the ultimate test.
@BlankBrain From the particle's perspective, yes. Although at those energies relativistic effects make scattering events more, not less likely.
What kind of accelerator?
@Johnny Cash If only we had some kind of a system where one could type in "Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility" and get instant information of this type.
We're gonna need a good vacuum, so conveniently, I had this turbomolecular pump laying around...
@Spehro Pefhany That will work! The rest of the setup is fairly easy to make.
Tanner Bean you always regret the one that got away. I had a chance to buy an Army surplus portable pontoon bridge for nothing, and passed,it up. That was like 30 years ago, and I still want it, and have not had any use for it.
@Gameboygenius ive got a turbo lying around from my car project if that counts?
@Tanner Bean mind sharing what auction site that was? Most of the sites I've seen don't have stuff like that
@Reece Beck it was a one-off in person auction in Utah a few years ago. Probably basically a once in a lifetime auction, a company that was a casualty of the LNG truck boom and bust. Maybe I'm wrong
I love how you show your process and explain why you do it that way. One day I hope to start a kind of lab of my own, and I love seeing all the different ways people use tools for various purposes. Thanks for the good content!
It'd be interesting to see its effect on a living thing - maybe part of a plant, or an agar plate with bacteria? I'm assuming it'd kill / sterilise the affected region very quickly.
That's a good idea. Since I mentioned it's used to sterilize equipment, I should show it working!
@Applied Science maybe draw your logo with the beem in the petri dish lol. Btw unless I misheard you the e beam x links the extruded heatshrink tubing before it's expanded. That's what gives it a way to relax to its original size when you reheat it in use. You can over irradiate it in processing and make it brittle.
an EPROM chip could be interesting, while constantly reading it to see if the bits just get erased (like with UV) or get wildly flipped around because of the electrons
I hear someone who now knows the heart-stopping how-expensive-was-the-mistake-I-just-made sound of a turbomolecular pump yowling as it crashes to a halt.
@wbeaty Might want to change that bracket to 12ga and add a few giant zip ties to supplement the clamps. Should be all good then. Double-heh.
@wbeaty TBF, I typically have my little turbopumps hanging on by the flange, otherwise unsupported. If they really crashed, like with a big piece of debris, it would probably throw the whole setup around, because the setup isn't much heavier. My only protection is that there's not much in the system that can actually throw debris, and it's around several corners from the pump.
@Sootikins no no no... MORE DUCT-TAPE EEGORE!
@wbeaty can you link this video?
@Reece Beck It's from the famous and infamous Glasslinger, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL0fXUZ4wFQ
Things to put in the beam:
CMOS / CCD sensor.
Crookes radiometer
Various (decapped?) ICs / semiconductors, see how their characteristics change
voltage references / bandgaps
Opamps
Diodes
transistors / mosfets
I think the glass envelope on a Crook's radiometer would be too thick for the electron energies involved.
Yes to the Crookes radiometer!
@Tisha Hayes e-beams spew out x-rays, so, 30KeV x-rays through glass, probably also glow-discharge in the gas, from trapped charge on surface.
@Doxie Lain Crookes Radiometers always rotate when their gas is made to glow (e.g. when in microwave oven, when held near a CW tesla coil, etc.)
@Nicol 1930s-style death rays would supposedly cause distant car engines to stall, by inhibiting sparking (or perhaps by changing hot sparks into cold glow-discharge?)
As always, some of the absolute coolest stuff and best production on youtube. Thanks so much for the effort.
We have a 1 MeV electron beam at work for cross-linking of cable insulations, some of which go into nuclear power plants. For more common applications there are cheaper ways of cross-linking plastics. The irradiation happens in a concrete bunker due to the safety aspects of the emitted radiation. Unfortunately I have not got to play with it too much... which is probably a good thing :)
Correction of how the heat shrink works:
You first manufacture the tube in its final shrunk size and then cross-link it. If you then heat it above its melting point it will not become liquid, but it is instead a "rubber" which you can stretch it by a lot. Cooling it in its stretched state will cause it to freeze in place, and it will only go back after heating above its melting point at a later stage. This is extra apparent if you use transparent heat shrinks (for example PTFE) as they are often milky at ambient temperature due to the crystals in the plastic, but at the temperature when it starts to shrink it usually turns transparent as the crystals melt.
(Note: PTFE does not work well with electron beam crosslinking as it degrades (does not like radiation), but luckily it behaves as a cross-linked material already from the start due to the high amounts of chain-entanglements)
@Richard_Andersson have you encountered the early history? Arno B., trying to fall off an Alp? (His co-author was killed.) Capacitron in 1951 Popular Mechanics, in Life mag 1947. Also Lawrence and his Megavolt, https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft5s200764&chunk.id=d0e2505&toc.depth=1
ALso see https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Electrical-Experimenter/SI-1928-06.pdf , Brasch tries to harness storm cloud as MV supply for atom-smashers.
Awesome video as always!
One idea for another experiment: you could install a few solenoids in front of the cathode with incrementally increased B field to focus the beam to a tighter point. This could reduce the amount of wasted electrons that hit the anode and send more through the window. (I'm not sure if this vacuum tube is big enough for the number of windings and length needed, but I could run a quick simulation in Comsol if it seems like an idea worth trying.)
I'd be curious about giving atoms some extra electrons. Like what happens if you take a chunk of sodium, shoot it with this, then throw it in water? Will it be "supercharged" with even more electrons than usual, and release more energy when you activate it?
Another idea: stick Styrofoam peanuts to something with static electricity (maybe the lid to a plastic tote container) and see if this thing can knock the peanuts off.
Would this travel farther in helium/hydrogen due to lower density? That would be cool to see.
What happens if you take a second tube with a second window at one end, phosphor at the other end, and vacuum inside? Can you put window to window, with a gap of 5mm or something, such that it traverses air, then goes back into vacuum, and then can travel another 10cm before striking phosphor to make a spot? That would be neat, transferring electrons from one vacuum chamber to another, across an air gap.
Since sodium is conductive, all of the charge would be located on the surface of the chunk and I think it would discharge as soon as it touched another material (even non-conductive, like the thing you're holding it with or water). Highly charged metals even emit electrons into the air, so I think there would be no difference between throwing sodium in water with and without exposing it to the beam first.
I’d love to see you place a diamond in the electron beam. In my line of work I frequently place diamond samples into a scanning electron microscope to examine their luminescence to the electron beam and it would be really interesting to see how it would react in air.
Great work, Ben! Since it probably takes as little as nanoseconds for electrons to accelerate, have you thought about hooking up AC or pulsed HV generator, like Tesla coil or Van der Graaf, to accelerate? You could probably get much higher voltage this way.
I love this project, I've seen videos of industrial electron beams and always wondered if that's something that could be replicated at home. I think it would be really interesting to increase the voltage on the beam and see if you could get those lightning patterns to work. It shouldn't be too hard to build a 100+ KV voltage multiplier....
Dear Ben, I would like to thank you for sharing your experiments and demonstrate the scientific background. I would suggest to coat the filament with BaO2 and form inside the tube a beam in order to direct the electrons beam directly on the window. I assume that it would be more efficient! Keep up the good work!!
Can this be used to generate electride salts by just blasting an aqueous solution of some relatively electropositive salt/salts or something of the sort? Could be very useful to obtain an aggressive reductive agent without the need for special precursors.
Wow! This channel deserve 10 million subscribers, I subscribed many science channels but no one is even close to this guy in coolness.
Respect from india 🇮🇳
Ben, thanks for such a nice video! I really enjoyed it. One thing: if you adjust to 100microAmp that gives you the current of e- through your filament, but another thing is the amount of e- coming out through such an small aperture, that must be orders of magnitude smaller by solid angle and distance. One thing I was curious is whether one could try to actually measure such an small current outside of the collimator, and determine the flux of e- coming out, perhaps a wire around it and measure the induced current?
As always your videos are very informative!
I was curious about the Hysol 1C. I used to be a high vacuum service engineer (Leybold) and we used Araldite Solvent Free 5 minute epoxy for sealing threaded vacuum components. However I have ordered the Hysol 1C as I do need to seal some torrseal fittings to some needle valves in my pump system. I used to have a turbo pump on my pump system now I use a diff pump. By the way don't boil the diff pump oil as I saw in one of your videos, that reduces the efficiency. At the correct temp the oil should just show some movement on the surface.
I'm a glass blower making glass neon signs. I would love being your neighbor as being a glass blower, working with noble gasses would be cool projects together. :)
Absolutely brilliant stuff - again.. :) Thanks Ben!
I'd try to put a photographic film / image sensor (one you don't mind destroying ;) ) in front of the Beta source aperture though the incandescent bulb might be a problem. Would it work to bend the tube and deflect the electron beam so light cannot get through the aperture?
Weird, I've always known beta rays were electrons (or positrons), but I never thought of an electron gun as being a beta emitter. There was a sort of disconnect between the two pieces of information that didn't allow me to put 2 and 2 together and realize electron guns and beta emitters are one and the same. I guess I focused too much on the source, rather than what's coming out of the source.
Amazing idea! The concept of using light bulbs as ion sources is completely unbeatable in terms of simplicity and cost!
Are you opening the foreline vacuum slowly to save the window the shock pressure change? A vacuum chamber that small has very little pressure-wise inertia.
Thanks for yet another incentive to complete my high vac setup!
You always seem to come up with such interesting videos. Thanks for another great one!
Thanks mate.
This was so interesting - I had always wondered if this could be done, and how... ie: without involving some big particle accelerator (an improbable ask given time/cost constraints). Also fascinating were the applications you mentioned that this can be used for.
Gee... this really brought me into my PhD years. I remember we bought a bunch of those and I was trying to sputter deposit some amorphous material onto them and watch it crystallize in situ in TEM (every time I took them out of the sputterer I found them exploded). I almost was shocked when you mentioned that they can hold vacuum, since I remember how fragile they were (but at least the plasma thing in the beginning of the vid made me calm again). Amazing work, though, Ben! Huge fan of your channel!
I’ve been watching your videos for a few years and I’m always waiting for the next one. Thank you for sharing this with us.
What a fantastic video! I am blown away at how effective these things are. Thanks for another video that widened my perspective
Woah! Have you made a cloud chamber yet? Might be an interesting target.
It seems like the obvious thing to put in front of it would be a cloud chamber.
one chaotic chamber
Great video!, I use similar tools in a semiconductor cleanroom. Never imagined that someone will build similar ones in a garage :D
Technical questions, what vacuum levels did you reach and what is the limitation?, the pump or the chamber?. Did you use any roughing pumps?. What are the value of voltage, current and frequency of your source?.
He was using a common flashlight bulb. DC current, 100mA. Probably a few volts. He showed how he made it in the video.
Great video! You should try chilling the pink-calcite below 0c, then irradiate it, then watch it as it warms up to room temp. It will display thermoluminesence as it warms. I've made a few Lichtenberg figures on medical linacs, usually ones that are about to be removed. I've wanted to try pink calcite but haven't purchased any yet.
Any chance we can go deeper in static charges? Love your content! Keep it up
Cool experiment!
I once worked with Kilovac & Jennings changeover vacuum relays. We had some problems with field emission leakage ~10uA IIR... and subsequent Xrays :-) (also Molybdenum+Tungsten contacts).
We noticed a Saphire actuation rod inside the relay had a deep blue after-glow after power off - was interesting and new to me at the time.
I'd love to see you do some lensing/guiding work with the beam. It appears that it diverges quite a lot after exiting the pupil, do you think you can get back to a beam? I'd love to learn how this is done; and I wonder if it works similarly to optical sources; there you might have a geometrical-optic solution (lenses/mirrors) or even a fancy wave-optical solution (Bragg gratings, etalons, etc.) but what do you do with electrons? Does this cross some kind of boson/fermion line? Please help, I only know enough about this stuff to ask questions!
Now this is really cool! I've subscribed and checked out some of your other content like the homemade LCD. Have you thought about making something like a diy geiger counter to monitor the radiation from your projects? I'd love to see your method for producing one.
Very cool!
What differences would be required in your build to accommodate the MeV range of energies?
Will using a grounded target act as an attractant and extend the beam length?
Another thought. Could you make a single wire 'circuit' function with this? Or run a small finely balanced HV motor with it?
You could arrange 2 electrodes, each with one hole, in such a way that the beam passes through the first electrode and then through the second one. Then apply high voltage across the electrodes and you can observe how long electric arc can you create.
My father used to work in air traffic control for the RAF, I remember as a youngster (1960's) visiting him at work and seeing a small room full of CRT's all without phosphored screens. When a call sent by an aircraft it was received by multiple stations each remotely controlling a CRT, the beams projected across the room onto a large (presumably phosphored) screen to auto-triangulate the aircraft location. Hope my memory stands the test of time.
I enjoy and appreciate the way in which you explain processes in such a simplistic manner! Thank you!
I would be interested in seeing the beams effects on semiconductors and solid state circuitry. Perhaps make a simple 555 based Astable Multivibrator and then measure its frequency and fluctuations when in the beam and outside the beam.
Mr Carlson's Lab - 2020-09-21
Great stuff Ben! Any thoughts on adding beam forming plates or (A focus electrode) inside the device to focus the beam?
wbeaty - 2020-09-23
@Knowledge is everything A rock shop in AZ tried it, probably with an e-beam food irradiator, but only created a smoky-quartz layer down a few mm into 15mm thickness of long quartz rods. So they were selling those cheap on eBay around 2012. I thought: ...just rotate the rods, maybe insert/remove a glass plate, to smear out the energy.
¡A LOS 10 subs PASO mi PACK! - 2020-10-20
I love that he builds cool shit but then like a year later he combines all the cool shit into one super cool thing... Shit
kararishere - 2020-11-12
@Applied Science Question, would it be possible toget the electron beam powerful enough to burn paper?
Jeffrey Young - 2021-03-04
@Applied Science The ion trap bends the ion beam away from the phosphor screen to prevent burning the screen. The ions were from the source, not the target.
Rather than using a lamp filament, have you thought of using an electron gun from an oscope tube? that way, you focus the beam down and accelerate the electrons to the window. You can also regulate the intensity of the beam to prevent burning out the window.
An electron gun from a television tube would be better, as the oscope gun has deflection plates rather than using coils to deflect the beam, if you can find an old mono television picture tube... But a color tube would work as well, you would have three sources in one gun.
Ciprian Popa - 2021-12-02
@Mr Carlson's Lab This setup would not produce that many ions. Ions are emitted when using a coated tungsten filament, mostly by dissociation of the coating material (usually barium oxide), producing oxygen ions that would fly with the electrons in the field as they are similarly charged. A tungsten only filament would not have anything to split unless it's a dirty filament.