Hello, I'm Aubrey Kennedy!
Welcome to my portfolio site! I'm deeply passionate about physics and understanding how the universe works at every scale; from the quantum world to massive astrophysical systems, it drives me to build a career that combines scientific curiosity and engineering. I have one bachelor's degree in Physics and another in Electrical Engineering from the University of Utah, and today I'm pursuing a master's in Applied Physics at Johns Hopkins University.
This is a simulated bubble chamber. Hover or tap a track to identify the particle.
Reading the chamber
A bubble chamber is a tank of superheated liquid inside a magnet. A charged particle passing through boils a trail of bubbles along its path, and the magnet bends the path. Four rules explain most of what you see.
- Bend shows charge. Positive particles curve one way, negative the other. Neutral particles leave no trail.
- Curl shows momentum. The slower or lighter the particle, the more tightly the field bends it. Spirals are particles running out of energy.
- Thickness shows ionisation. Slow, heavy, highly charged particles boil more liquid per centimetre, so their trails are thick and bright.
- Vees and kinks are decays. A track that starts from nothing, or changes direction abruptly, is something invisible turning into something visible.
The simulation uses the real scaling laws (Lorentz curvature, Bethe–Bloch energy loss, multiple scattering, bremsstrahlung) with constants chosen for a screen rather than a detector. Alpha and beta tracks are what a home cloud chamber shows. The beam and collision sprays are what CERN's hydrogen bubble chambers photographed in the 1960s and 70s.