Mason Inman - science journalist

If you've ever been pining to do particle physics experiments in your own home, to see visible marks of electrons or other particles whizzing through space, then pick up one of these: CloudTracker, a little desktop cloud chamber.

If you've ever read anything about particle physics, you've probably seen a photo like the one below from a cloud chamber, showing the tracks left by charged particles—like contrails from a plane—as they spiral around in a magnetic field:

Now you can buy a mini cloud chamber that looks like this:

Or here's instructions on how to make your own, which seems to work on the same principle as the CloudTracker.

Physicists retired cloud chambers a long time ago in favor of wire detectors (which won someone a Nobel Prize for their invention) and silicon detectors, which are incredibly complicated. So I was kind of surprised that it doesn't seem too hard to make the old kind of detector, and you can actually use it for experiments good enough for a high school science fair, at least.