Re: SparkChambers
The solid dry ice ones would have been cloud chambers rather than bubble chambers, the latter being a superheated liquid and the former a supersaturated vapour. The passage of a high-energy subatomic particle leaves an ionisation trail behind it which then nucleates either condensation of the vapour (cloud chamber) or appearance of a trail of fine bubbles (bubble chamber). In a spark chamber the ionisation causes a gas discharge to develop. In some ways they're all similar, in others they're very different.
There were once some quite large liquid hydrogen bubble chambers at the lab where I spent most of my working life. By the time I arrived they had gone. But the huge (essentially immovable) concrete blast wall put in to direct the explosion fragments away from the staff in the event of an accident was still there !
Cheers,
GJ
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