MBPBC: Making a Mixing Bowl Ping-pong Ball Cyclotron

MBPBC: Mixing Bowl Ping-pong Ball Cyclotron 🌀 A mini LHC for your tabletop experiments! #SMBPBC #TabletopCyclotron #PhysicsFun

To create a Mixing Bowl Ping-pong Ball Cyclotron (MBPBC), follow these steps:

You will need

A large Mixing bowl. A transparent one is best

Some flat copper tape that is adhesive on one side

Some leads

A spare Van de Graaff generator

1) Take a ping-pong ball and cover it in graphite from a pencil

2) Create the charging strips

First make a cross from one side to the other. All the copper must make good contact with one another. These will be connected to one side of the Van de Graaff generator, say the +ve side

3) Now make another set of conducting strips. These must not touch the cross and must all be linked together. These form the -ve side. The copper wires therefore go -ve,+ve -ve +ve all around the mixing bowl, as in the picture below

4) Connect to the Van de Graaff Generator and put the ping  pong ball in, and switch on.

The ball will spring around the bowl

A different type of cyclotron

To create a Mixing Bowl Ping-pong Ball Cyclotron (MBPBC), follow these steps:

1. Materials:

   • A large, smooth mixing bowl
   • Ping-pong balls
   • Hairdryer or leaf blower
   • Optional: food colouring and water

2. Preparation:

   • Place the mixing bowl on a flat surface.
   • Optional: Add a thin layer of coloured water to the bowl's bottom to visualize the motion better.

3. Building the MBPBC:

   • Position the hairdryer or leaf blower with its nozzle pointing at a tangent to the bowl's inner surface near the rim.
   • Turn on the device at its lowest setting and gradually increase the speed until you see the desired circular motion.
   • Drop a ping-pong ball into the bowl, and observe how it accelerates around its inner surface, mimicking a cyclotron's particle acceleration.
   • Adjust the airspeed to maintain a stable circular motion of the ping-pong ball.

4. Experiment:

   • Try adding multiple balls, adjusting the airspeed, or tilting the bowl slightly to observe how these changes affect the motion.

Enjoy your homemade MBPBC! Remember, this is a simplified model for fun & educational purposes and doesn't replicate the exact functioning of a real cyclotron. #DIYPhysics #MBPBC #CyclotronFun