Just go to http://soldersmoke.com. On that archive page, just click on the blue hyperlinks and your audio player should play that episode.
http://soldersmoke.com
It was time to take a break from building SSB transceivers. I wanted to build something completely different. I went with something that I've wanted to build since I was a kid. Sometime in the late 1960s, I read about a Wilson Cloud Chamber in the book "The Amateur Scientist" by C.L. Stong (my mom got the book for me, at great sacrifice).
You have to make a little cloud in a chamber. When an atomic particle flies through (as they do!) it will leave a little trace in the cloud. Cool. Literally cool: This is a dry ice diffusion cloud chamber. You make the cloud by putting isopropyl alcohol in blotter paper at the top of the chamber. You then cool the bottom part (a lot) using dry ice. The alcohol evaporates, then is cooled into a cloud by the low temperature of the dry ice. Fortunately, my local supermarket has started selling dry ice (it was harder to come by when I was a kid). For the chamber, I used a plastic container from the same superpmarket. For the light source I used a little LED workshop flasllight.
I saw traces immediately, while I was setting the thing up.
Here are two videos of what I saw during that first hour:
This one minute video shows the traces I saw. Look for the little whisps of "smoke":
This one shows a few more traces, but then BOOM at about 27 seconds. Check it out. What is that? (Thinking about it some more, I think this may have just been some higher humidity air leaking into the chamber and condensing suddenly.)
Wow, I've been wanting to build a Wilson Cloud Chamber for a long time, ever since I read about one back in the 1970s in C.L. Stong's famous book "The Amateur Scientist." Now this fellow Jim Messier comes along with this amazing video that features a cloud chamber that he built for a few bucks at age 13. I am feeling the pressure. No pun intended.
Back in the day, a reasonable excuse for not building this device was that it was hard to find the dry ice you needed for the cooling. No more! Now, at least in this area, you can get dry ice at your local supermarket (bring thick gloves or else you can burn your hands on this stuff). The heat is on. Well, actually the cold is on.
All of this was sparked by a visit to Jim Messier's amazing YouTube channel, "Our Own Devices." There is a lot of great material there. Check it out and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@CanadianMacGyver
I think this is one of the best troubleshooting events in radio history: they thought at one point that what they were hearing was the result of pigeon poop in the antenna. Turns out they were hearing radiation from the birth of the universe.
And here is a wonderful 2014 6 minute podcast with Penzias and his co-discoverer Robert Wilson:
The first one, about ham operators in general, is pretty depressing. Then it goes downhill as they shift to those who are listening to baby monitors and cell phones. Yuck.
The second one seems to show some physicist having understandable difficulty explaining particle-wave duality in a short TV segment.
There is a short bit (that I didn't quite get) about the BBC's "Teddy Bear's Picnic."
The final one is about Gerald Wells and his Antique Wireless Museum in South London. Note the white coat -- clearly a boffin. For a while I confused him with Rupert Goodwins G6HVY (similar white coat, but a different bloke).
Don't let the scary nuclear chemistry title put you off -- there is a LOT of very familiar homebrew stuff in this video. You will feel right at home. Many of the resonances take place in the ham bands. The CBLA may have to get involved here.
Thanks to Chuck WB9KZY for sending this.
And check out Ben's video on is best projects from the last 10 years:
Andreas DL1AJG (who in real life is a professional biologist) sends us this excellent article about how biologists approach problems in living cells as opposed to how engineers or technicians approach problems in broken radios.
This excerpt from the 2002 article gives you an idea of the tone and content of the article:
"... I started to contemplate how biologists would determine why my radio does not work and how they would attempt to repair it. Because a majority of biologists pay little attention to physics, I had to assume that all we would know about the radio is that it is a box that is supposed to play music. How would we begin? First, we would secure funds to obtain a large supply of identical functioning radios in order to dissect and compare them to the one that is broken. We would eventually find how to open the radios and will find objects of various shape, color, and size (Figure 2). We would describe and classify them into families according to their appearance. We would describe a family of square metal objects, a family of round brightly colored objects with two legs, round-shaped objects with three legs and so on. Because the objects would vary in color, we would investigate whether changing the colors affects the radio's performance. Although changing the colors would have only attenuating effects (the music is still playing but a trained ear of some can discern some distortion) this approach will produce many publications and result in a lively debate..."
Andreas points to diagrams in the article (see below). The first (A) shows how the biologist might view the radio. The schematic (B) shows how engineers or technicians view it:
As I read the article, I was reminded of the wise advice frequently dispensed through the SolderSmoke podcast: Do not look at a schematic as one single circuit. Instead try to see it as a number of subcircuits. Build and test these subcircuits separately. Join them together only after each subcircuit is found to be working.
This is all really interesting. I will share this with my son who is involved now in biological research.
In addition to his day job as a biologist, Andreas is a homebrewer of radios. Here is a pictures he sent to us back in 2019 of a regen receiver that he built:
Andreas asks if he might need an old Boatanchor radio to work on to improve his electronics/physics skills. I'd suggest staying away from the older tube stuff. Stick with the BITXs -- homebrew one, stage by stage. And indeed, use the engineering approach to the electronics!
This is a really wonderful book. I'm glad worldradiohistory.com has found a way to make it available as a free download. This is the kind of book that you want to download and keep available for future study. The day will come, for example, when you will want to understand how Einstein's special relativity explains how that transformer in your rig actually works. F.A. Wilson explains that, and much more. Here is the link:
Wow. This is a very thought provoking program. It is kind of like "Mr. Roger's Neighborhood," but with science. The lessons provided by Mr. Wizard are really good, but one shudders to think about doing the these experiments with kids (or even with adults!) in today's world. Here are a few of things that would cause trouble today:
-- Liquid mercury.
-- A big power supply. ("Here Willy, you hold the positive terminal.")
-- Even the sprinkling of iron filings would probably require masks at a minimum.
-- In the end, letting poor Willy drop to the floor when Betsy turns off the electromagnet that was holding his swing in the air.
-- And of course, poor old Mr. Wizard's affinity for the kids would stir suspicions.
We also see a sad and very early example of the influence of advertisers and what they call today "product placement." Note the fairly obvious plug (via Morse Code!) for breakfast cereal. In the credits you will see that the program was sponsored by "The Cereal Institute." What next kids? Cigarettes?
But there is a lot of virtue in this program: The development of the telegraph key, Morse Code, CW sidetone. Unlike many of the Box Top Extras of today, young Betsy was not afraid to wind a coil.
We should all embrace the spirit of Mr. Wizard. We are, after all, the International Brotherhood of Electronic WIZARDS! These experiments reminded me a lot of the Trivial Electric Motor that my son Billy and I made when he was around Willy's age (thanks for the idea Alan Yates).
Thanks to Chuck KF8TI for alerting us to this show. Chuck says this program was an early influence on him, and was one of the things that provided a connection between the theory he was learning in college and the real world of electronic devices.
Many more great programs like this can be found on Mr. Wizard's YouTube Channel:
It has taken me a while to put hands on keyboard to send you this message, but having seen or heard a few more of your references to Jean Shepherd, I felt I must. Being a fan of vintage radio equipment and the American scene of the late 1930s, sometime back I acquired a very nice circa 1938 Zenith 5-S-119 AM/Shortwave radio.
Though it had been recently re-capped, it took some effort to get the thing working (needed a new power transformer), and still needs to be aligned, but it made a nice addition to my 1930s NYC Art Deco-inspired office. One reason I bought it was to add a Bluetooth receiver to it so I could listen to podcasts, etc, from my phone. I like the big electromagnetic speaker that those radios have and thought it would be cool to bring this one back to life. I picked up a small Bluetooth receiver board and a power supply for a few dollars online and got it working in the Zenith with no difficulty, except for some AC hum and oscillator noise that I will work on when I have time. So, success!
But here is the Jean Shepherd part. I recall one of his broadcasts in which he offered his theory that every radio transmission ever made is still out there, traveling further and further into intergalactic space and getting weaker and weaker, but still there. What an idea that was. I would say he is right. I have pondered the idea ever since. So being also a Winston Churchill fan, what would be the first recording I would play through the Bluetooth? What else but his 1940 blood, toil, tears, and sweat speech! So there was the scene — the Churchill speech playing the same audio waveform through a radio that might very well have played it live (or close to live) back in 1940! Almost (though not quite) like detecting the original still-traveling radio signal out there past the star Phi2 Ceti or wherever it is now!
Well that was a quick adventure this past summer that I thought you might appreciate.
This guy is quite a character, with a real knack for describing physics. At the start of this video he says that these kinds of adventures are "good for the spirit and the soul." Right you are Professor Miller. I am currently recovering from a minor back injury. It is nothing serious, but it has delayed the production of the SolderSmoke Podcast #230. These videos are, for me, just what the doctor should have ordered.
I liked Miller's references to Michael Faraday.
There are many videos on the Julius Sumner Miller YouTube Channel. They are indeed "good for the spirit and the soul." Thanks to Hack-A-Day for alerting us to this treasure trove.
Yesterday my NanoVNA arrived. This morning I was looking for info on how to use it and I found this really wonderful video from Joe Smith. Wow. Joe gives a really useful intro to the capabilities of this amazing little device. He even reaches back in time and compares NanoVNA results with those obtained by a Millen Grid Dip Meter. He pulls out of his junk box an attenuator that is so old that it is marked in "Kilo-Megacycles." (Shouldn't we revive terms like that?) Joe also gives us a taste of what it is like to live and work in the GHz range. He warns us never to touch the SMA connectors on our NanoVNAs (too late Joe). And -- get this -- he uses a torque wrench to connect the little SMA coax connectors to the NanoVNA. I'm not kidding. A torque wrench. Joe connects surface mount capacitors and inductors that have their values specified not only in picofarads and microhenries, but also at the specific frequency at which they were measured. My understanding of the Smith Chart was greatly improved by watching Joe's video. Icing on the cake: Joe wraps up the video by using the NanoVNA to MEASURE THE SPEED OF LIGHT. Great stuff. Thanks Joe. Here is Joe Smith's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsK99WXk9VhcghnAauTBsbg
Now I have to get the software to use the NanoVNA with my computer.
Ben Krasnow has a KNACK for explaining technical things. I liked his videos on impedance. At the end of the second video, he said he'd do a third one that would focus on impedance in coaxial cables. But I couldn't find it on his channel. I hope it was made -- this is very interesting and useful. Ben's YouTube channel is here: https://www.youtube.com/user/bkraz333
This is an illuminating little book. It was published by the U.S. War Department on July 17, 1941, less than five months before Pearl Harbor. Far from being dated, this book contains a lot of great explanations of -- as the title indicates -- the fundamentals of radio. I turned to it this morning for a little refresher on the physics of regenerative feedback.
Amazing that the arguments about the presence or absence of a luminiferous ether made its way into parts advertisements in a radio magazine. This is from Radio for January 1923. (About 18 months before my dad was born.)
BTW that capacitor looks very nice, and would almost certainly still work. I have caps like that in my junk box. The shape of the blades helps address one of Pete Juliano's complaints about analog oscillators -- the inconsistent spacing of frequencies on the dial.
Thanks to Bob KD4EBM for alerting us to this. As Bob put it, Shannon definitely had The Knack. Check out the trailer (above) for this new movie. It looks like the IEEE is still working on the release plan for the film. Does anyone have info on this? More info on the film here: https://thebitplayer.com/ Four years ago we reported on a video about Shannon: https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2015/09/claude-shannon-had-knack-video.html Thanks Bob!
Really great to see this session with Nobel Prize winner Joe Taylor, K1JT. I liked his comments on his use of his retirement office at Princeton, University. I also liked his slide on how far below the noise level you can go with various modes. And then there was his reminder to 1) RTFM and 2) be sure to check the EME delay box so that your software will get the timing right when working earth-moon-earth. "Pulsars keep good time."
"SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" is now available as an e-book for Amazon's Kindle.
Here's the site:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004V9FIVW
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