BENGALURU : Put simply, Cyclotron is a film on the world’s oldest functional particle accelerator. Or like its director, Jahnavi Phalkey, puts it, “It’s a film on an extraordinary machine and tells the story of everyday science in a regional university in India, one that is so underfunded that it can’t do the state-of-the-art research that it would like to do.” The 59-minute long film is available for screening on Bangalore International Centre’s website, as part of BIC Screens.
Breaking down what this particle accelerator does, Phalkey explains how this machine, in a way, was the early or baby version of CERN’s particle accelerator. “It smashes open an atomic nucleus and allows one to study the physical properties of protons, neutrons and electrons,” she says of the machine, which was brought to Panjab University, Chandigarh from the University of Rochester, United States, in 1967, in a dismantled form.
This, at a time when nuclear physics experiments in India were done only in establishments with a department of atomic energy. “Indian universities didn’t have the facilities needed for experimental nuclear physics. And you need people who are incredibly technically competent to function a machine of this sort - one that works on precarious balances of vacuum, power supply, etc,” says Phalkey, who is also the founding director of Science Gallery Bengaluru, who fell compelled to film this documentary in 2012. “It took me this much time to release the film because I did it more as a passion project and did it alongside my other work.”
But there’s much more to this film than just the machine. “It’s also a story told through the eyes of the people who first made, run and used the machine. So, the documentary features interviews with the first physicists who assembled the accelerator, the technicians, along with the students who did their PhD with the cyclotron,” says Phalkey, who doesn’t have an intended target audience for this film. “I didn’t want to slow the film as a science, social or cultural film. Because it is as much about science as it is a historical or social venture. So, I don’t have an intended audience.
All I have is a film and I’m curious to see who will watch it,” she says.
In 2007, Phalkey completed her PhD. As part of the process, she studied six laboratories in India – Cyclotron Laboratory at the University Science College, Kolkata; Department of Physics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru; Accelerator Division at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai; Cyclotron at the Department of Physics at the Panjab University, Chandigarh; Van der Graaff at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur; and Variable Energy Cyclotron, Kolkata. Of these, the first three were published as part of a book she wrote. “I haven’t used the other three but have the research material on it. And when it came to this acceleratory at Panjab University, I knew that writing about it academically wouldn’t do justice to the human elements of the story. A film made more sense.”