Cavendish Laboratory : Wilson's expansion chamber of 1895-1898
Cavendish Laboratory
<p style='text-align: justify;'>Wilson's perfected cloud chamber of 1895-1898. CTR Wilson used the expansion chamber to determine precisely the conditions under which water vapour droplets would condense out of supersaturated vapour. The sensitivity was such that a single charged particle would act as a condensation centre. The apparatus was used by JJ Thomson and Wilson to make the first estimates of the charge of the electron. This is the precursor of the famous cloud chamber of 1912.</p>