Zaptronics – Day Zero

Welcome to Zaptronics.

Here you will find detailed breakdowns of the projects we have been working on. Not just videos of the finished products, but the design and construction process, all broken down to the individual component level.

We build real scientific apparatus and instrumentation that delves deep into the world of physics. As we venture forth, many individual components that spring from this endeavour will be made available for purchase.

Zaptronics does not want to sell you a finished product. It wants to give you the ideas, the spark of inspiration, and the tools to make things yourself. For us, the journey is just as interesting as the destination.

Everyone is welcome to follow the Lab Notebook, which will detail the entire process.

What’s happening now?

The current active project is a diffusion cloud chamber that allows you to visualise ionising radiation as it passes through supersaturated isopropyl alcohol. This experiment has been done many times and can be replicated easily using a small plastic enclosure and dry ice, as demonstrated by Brian Cox in this video.

Fortunately for you, easy is not the Zaptronics way. We just have to turn everything up to 11 and hope to bring you along for the ride.

Our cloud chamber has evolved into a multidisciplinary project covering custom PCB design, high-voltage systems, aluminium extrusions, glass cutting and assembly, exotic glass coatings such as Indium Tin Oxide, and condensing refrigeration systems.

What happens next?

Currently, we are a little further ahead than depicted in the above photograph, but think of that as a teaser of what’s to come. The site has very little content today, but over time we’ll add more and more Lab Notes and hope to catch you up soon.

Future projects in the pipeline include

• Cosmic ray/muon detection
• Physical vapour deposition
• Sonoluminescence
• Spectrometry
• Speed of Light measurement, and problems.
• Quantum entanglement, erasers

Related instrumentation

• Fast FPGA event counting and correlation
• Precision multi-channel ADC acquisition.
• Thermal regulation and PID controllers
• SiPM Transimpedance Amplifiers.

Stay tuned.

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