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FunctionWire chambers are made of many parallel wires, arranged as a grid and put on high voltage. When a particle passes through the chamber, it leaves a trail of ions, which drift toward the nearest wire. Identifying the wires that had a pulse of current, one can see the particle's path. It is the electronic counterpart to the image method (e.g. bubble chamber).
Historical AttributesWas used at Cornell University. Part of an experimental set-up that detected the polarization of the positron beam in the Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) with a polarimeter which detects back-scattered laser light.
Primary SourcesW. W. McKay, et al., "Measurement of the Upsilon Mass," Physical Review D 29 (1984): 2483-2490. (see fig. 3)
ProvenanceFrom Prof. Richard Wilson, Department of Physics, Harvard University.
See the personal page of Prof. Wilson: http://phys4.harvard.edu/~wilson/