sheets, plexiglass, glass and battery.
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After many hours reading lots of documents by Lochak, Stumpf, Daviau (in Nantes) and the russians,
I patched together a first set-up to record LMM tracks on Rx film:
The film is sandwiched horizontally between 2 pairs of bristol paper sheets, the whole assembly is then
placed between 2 thin aluminium sheets; a partially discharged 9 volts alkaline battery keeps a voltage
difference of 7.2 volts between the aluminium sheets; this stack is then posed on a 6.5 mm thick plexiglass
plate and a 1.75 mm thick glass plate is placed on top of the stack.
A 82 mm long by 5 mm diameter betalight (activity level: 1 curie) is placed 6 mm in front of the film, with
its axis in the same plane as the film, parallel to its long side.
The north pole of a largish Neodymium magnet (50 mm long, 25 mm high, 12,5 mm thick) is kept in close
contact with the betalight, thus hopefully transforming (theoretically and partially) the stream of antineutrinos
produced by the betalight into a stream of north LMM.
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sheets, plexiglass, glass and battery.
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First recording attempt (long: 41 hours!), followed by 20 minutes in the developer, 20 minutes in the fixer
and a 30 minutes rinse.
Result: a film nearly blank at first sight, with a few strangely sharp blots...
Under the enlarger, I find tens of strange zig-zaggy discontinuous tracks looking for all I know like tractor tracks
or caterpillar tracks as described in the book and papers by Lochak.
Some tracks are quite meandering, others are doubled, others still seem to hit an obstacle and make a sharp turn
as if they rebounded there;
Some tracks are slowly curving, others are intricately entangled, thus forming dense knots that look like blots to
the unaided eye, etc.
The tracks go in all directions, they don't diverge clearly from the position of the betalight...
As a matter of fact, there are practically no tracks near the betalight...
Here and there on the film, there are some highly visible tracks, many others are barely detectables, there are
pairs of parallel tracks, etc...
All in all, quite a circus!
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LMM characteristic tracks:
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seen from above |
seen from below |
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