Cyclotron

[Royal]

"The first particle accelerators were linear," writes author Nathan Dennison, "but Ernest Lawrence bucked this trend and used many small electrical impulses to accelerate particles in circles. Starting off as a sketch on a scrap paper, his first design cost just US $25 to make. LAwrence continued to develop his [cyclotron] using parts including a kitchen chair... until finally he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1939."

Larence's cyclotron accelerated charged atomic or subatomic particles by using a constant magnetic field and changing electrical field to create a spiraling path of particles that started at the center of the spiral. After spiraling many times in an evacuated chamber, the high-energy particles could finally smash into atoms and the results could be studied using a detector. One advantage of the cyclotron over prior methods was its relatively compact size that could be used to achieve high energies.

Physicists Milton Stanley Livingston (left) and Ernest O. Lawrence (right) in front of a 27-inch cyclotron at the old Radiation Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley (1934).

[Pigeon]

Cool old picture.

Heck of a pony ride for some particle.