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"Nuts and bolts":
interactive exibits
Exhibit
development & fabrication
Designs
& performance specifications
Discovery
Disks: mobile mini-interactives
'Beam Cam' projecting video microscope
Underwater
Street Discovery Centre
Moscow
Planetarium
Sellafield
Visitor Centre
'Alternative
energy'
Earth
Science
Fixed
Discovery Disks, Glasgow
Air-table,
telescope, moon-phases
Astronomy
exhibits for Valencia
Biometrics
Magnetic
field exhibit for CERN, Geneva
Tabletop
Discovery Disks: magnetism
Tabletop
Discovery Disks: Light
More
Light interactives
"Academic"
interactives: The Energy Enzyme
"Academic
interactives": Electron beams
"Academic
interactives": Mantle geology
Working
canal-lock model
Virtual
exhibit: Ich bin einmalig
Chemistry
interactives: Chirality
Video
microscopes: Melting crystal
Push-button
quiz: Breath of life
Environmental
& biological
Cookbook
outlines of my 1992 "classical" Great Explorations interactives
Talk to me!
UK phone/fax
+44 (0) 1663 743794
Email ian@interactives.co.uk
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Electron-beam
exhibit 'set'
A particularly 'high-tech' pair of mutually-related interactives relating
to the Synchrotron Radiation Department at Daresbury and Rutherford Laboratories.
It was necessary to show the basic principles by which an electron beam
can be 'bent' by magnetic fields. The interactives would be located in
the laboratory's own visitor centre, and also occasionally taken to temporary
exhibitions elsewhere.
The needs of two very different target audiences needed to be combined.
Older students were to be able to make sufficiently accurate measurements
for some advanced-level experiments. Yet children aged eleven years or
less make up a high percentage of the visitors to Daresbury. They would
also be using these interactives to get some elementary idea about electron
beams, essential for any early concept of a synchrotron radiation source.
An interesting challenge!
Conventional, advanced-level, teaching-laboratory apparatus was used,
clearly displayed and with all wiring connections perfectly obvious. But
everything was sufficiently protected and 'hardened' for safety and to
prevent damage to the equipment. This protection had to be designed so
that none of the appeal or freedom of the experiments was lost.
'Maltese
cross' experiment
The glowing filament at the back of the cathode ray tube emits enough
light to cast a shadow of the Maltese cross on the screen. A push-button
switches on the electron beam while it is held down. This causes a bright
green fluorescence on the screen, around the same shadow.
The other control is a rotating knob through the toughened glass window.
It is connected to a magnet on the end of a rod, which passes in front
of the green-glowing screen and distorts the shadow of the Maltese cross
in a way that never fails to intrigue people.
'Deflecting
electrons'
A coated mica screen intersects an electron beam which appears on it
as a glowing line. Both electrostic and magnetic deflections of the beam
can be precisely controlled by the user. A small magnetic compass needle
indicates reversals of the magnetic field.
One additional fine adjustment, necessary for supervised, advanced experiments
but not desirable for other users, was enabled by means of a hidden screw.
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