“So you can’t afford a Large Hadron Collider of your own? No, I can’t either. Anyway, where would I put it? I’ve got enough clutter around here already.
So I decided to build a Small Hadron Collider, and now you too can build one of your very own! You can watch it in action here:
Watch the particles zip around the track and help them on their way, if you like, by tipping it one way or another. Watch them collide and interact in different ways, and eventually decay.
But what is the significance of the different colours and brightnesses, and how many different ways can they interact and decay? And can you spot an elusive particle of Dark Matter? There’s a challenge on to see who can deduce the physical laws that control the particles, but until then, the source code remains a tightly guarded secret!
For best results you’ll need the big 60 pixel Neopixel Ring from Adafruit (Far Eastern WS2812 clones should work though I haven’t tried), but if you’re on a budget you can use any smaller size, which the firmware will detect down to 12 pixels. The 24 pixel ring is a good compromise but will only show 2 particles at a time.
If you’ve already built my Glowy Disco Badge then this project uses the same hardware. All you’ll need to do is load the firmware, and if you like, fit a larger Neopixel ring.”