At the CREEL permafrost tunnel outside Fairbanks, AK. Our guide, Art, explains a potential issue with the carbon balance in soils as the permafrost thaws as we traveled underground to see it the changes.
This activity is a way to create a cloud chamber in the classroom. A cloud chamber allows students to view "invisible" alpha particles emitted through nuclear decay. Alpha particles have a long history in nuclear physics--they are a helium nucleus and their emission during nuclear decay was one of the first ways we knew that atomic nuclei could