The particle accelerator in your home

15 March 2000

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Many people think of particle accelerators as being large "atom smashers", but the most common particle accelerators are the ubiquitous television tubes and computer monitors found in many homes. In a TV or computer monitor (seen here, removed from its normal casing), the particles accelerated are electrons, which are released from a hot metal cathode (at the far left). Between the source of electrons and the screen on the right, the particles are accelerated by electric fields, and deflected by electromagnetic fields - just as in large-scale particle accelerators. The screen is like the particle detectors used in experiments at particle physics laboratories.

Credit: Physics Photographic Unit, University of Oxford