The Liquid Hydrogen Bubble Chamber
The extracted particle beams, both the primary protons and secondaries, could in turn be passed for further study through various targets and specialized detectors, notably the liquid hydrogen bubble chamber. Many thousands of particle interactions, or "events", were photographed, measured, and studied in detail with an automated system of large measuring machines (known as "Frankensteins") allowing human operators (typically the wives of graduate students) to mark points along the particle tracks and punch their coordinates into IBM cards, using a foot pedal. The cards decks were then analyzed by early-generation computers, which reconstructed the three-dimensional tracks through the magnetic fields, and computed the momenta and energy of the particles. Computer programs, extremely complex for their time, then fitted the track data associated with a given event to estimate the energies, masses, and identities of the particles produced.
This period, when hundreds of new particles and excited states were suddenly revealed, marked the beginning of a new era in elementary particle physics. Luis Alvarez inspired and directed much of this work, for which he received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1968.
Read more about this topic: Bevatron
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