Particle detection infers a particle's passage from a physical change in matter. A cloud chamber makes the spatial pattern of ionization visible; an ionization chamber instead collects electric charge from ionization. Choosing the readout determines what can be inferred from a single event.
The Richter-Ting independent J/psi discovery experiments show how different readouts can establish the same particle resonance: reconstruct daughter invariant masses after a beam hits a stationary target, or tune the initial center-of-mass energy of two colliding beams. Both require an ensemble of events and calibrated particle detectors.
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