kenthorvath writes "This guy and his friend built their own cyclotron, capable of 1 MeV protons using spare parts and surplus science equipment. Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?"
So now we know what's at the galactic center...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Funny
An alien experiment that went seriously south and created a massive black hole.
Remember, kids, don't try this at home!
If it doesn't work out...
by
MacOS_Rules
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· Score: 5, Funny
This is what seems to be a very cool application of putting old equipment to good work. And hey, if it turns out that it doesn't work, he has a cheep and effective form of birth control...
*shudders* Me thinks of the advertisments for DIY permenant birth control... =O
-- If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.
-Thackeray, William
Re:If it doesn't work out...
by
LordDartan
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· Score: 5, Funny
So, are you saying being around a 4600lb magnet is birth control, or being a big enough geek to have a 4600lb magnet is the birth control??
Re:If it doesn't work out...
by
Tablizer
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· Score: 2, Funny
This is what seems to be a very cool application of putting old equipment to good work. And hey, if it turns out that it doesn't work, he has a cheep and effective form of birth control...
Do you mean the magnetism or what happens after your date asks you what it is?
Ray: "You know, it just occured to me that we really haven't had a successful test of this equipment." Egon: "I blame myself." Peter: "So do I." Ray: "Well, no sense in worrying about it now." Peter: "Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back."
-- --"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."
Re:Obligitory quote
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Funny
4600 lbs?
"That's a big twinkie"
Re:Obligitory quote
by
BorgCopyeditor
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· Score: 2, Funny
Come on, if you're going to call a GB quote "obligatory" here, it's gotta be this one:
Egon: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Venkman: What?
Egon: Don't cross the streams.
Venkman: Why?
Egon: It would be bad.
Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good-bad thing. Whattya mean "bad?"
Egon: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Ray: Total protonic reversal....
Venkman: Right, that's bad...OK.. important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.
We better not let terrorists get ahold of the protons; after all all nuclear weapons are made of them!
Fun with anti-matter?
by
Crasoum
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· Score: 5, Funny
It deffinatly would be interesting.....
Then again I know I wouldn't want -any- of my friends that are even remotely intelligent (and even less those that are not intelligent) to be messing with particle acceleration...
"Mom.... You did say you wanted a skylight didn't you?"
He is right, you know?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Funny
President W also said that he knows Iraq is building nuclear weapons because "they have bought aluminum tubes from other countries". And some people dare to say there's no hard evidence!
So I think that, to protect the american way of life (ie, the right to bomb the shit out of anyone who doesn't give us their oil for free), we should ban aluminum.
Re:He is right, you know?
by
NewtonsLaw
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· Score: 5, Funny
Ban aluminum?
Curses, "foiled" again!
Re:He is right, you know?
by
istartedi
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· Score: 3, Funny
Don't forget to follow the money. This is a "nonprofit" that takes foundation money. Of course foundations never come out and say "we're all a bunch of Leftist Europhiles living off the wealth of our 19th century ancestors who were capitalists so we're full of guilt and think socialism is just grand even though we like fancy things that people living in real socialist countries could never have". Instead they say they promote "social justice" and crap like that.
So, they may not be crackpots, but they are lapdogs of the Left who know where the money comes from, how to please the money, and how to say the right things so the money won't stop coming. Go ahead and mod me down or mod me "Funny" if you like, but a lot of you out there have experienced it first hand, and know I'm right.
-- For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
You Know what this means...
by
guttentag
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· Score: 2, Funny
A year from now, parents will be lined up at Toys 'R Us locations only to find that Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il have pre-ordered 90% of the shipping units.
Looks like we'll finally be able to build...
by
Istealmymusic
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· Score: 2, Funny
..the elusive "five dollar plasma weapon!".
-- "The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
Hemispheric safety.
by
Trusty+Penfold
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· Score: 5, Funny
These amateur experiments are very impressive but I'm always worried that the lack of safety guidance will lead imitators into trouble. For example, with this equipment there are potential safety issues if the experiment is replicated in the southern hemisphere.
In the southern hemisphere or, more specifically, south of the topic of Capricorn, the particles will need to spin the other way. This can be achieved in many ways; none of which were mentioned in the original article. For example; 1) Turn the equipment upside down. 2) Use magnets of opposite polarity. 3) Use anti-protons instead of protons,
Just one of these needs to be done to transofrm a southern cyclotron from a deathtrap into a fun and safe piece of equipment.
Re:Hemispheric safety.
by
Tablizer
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· Score: 4, Funny
In the southern hemisphere or, more specifically, south of the topic of Capricorn, the particles will need to spin the other way.
Solution: purchase a toilet from Australia, and stand in it while flushing it. The water will spiral down in a reverse direction from what it does in the northern hemisphere, protecting you from hemispheric polarity issues while operating your experiments.
Make sure all your neighbors see you stand in the Australian toilet to set a good safety example. Remember, not standing in the toilet is like riding a motorcycle without your foil helmet (which we discussed last time).
"...but the fact that average people can take a sound scientific principle and turn it into something physical for a handful of bills is wonderful"
Erm... the average person can't work a VCR let alone build a cyclotron... hell they probalby think a cyclotron is one of those exercise bikes from the shopping channel.
What to do with the cyclotron?
by
TDDeYoung
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· Score: 2, Funny
To take an idea from Tom Smith-
"307 Ale me lads, 307 ale....the finest drink that any bar has ever had for sale...."
Bottoms up!
TDD
Now that's a real friend..someone who helps you build your own cyclotron.
Reminds me of a good story . . .
by
arnie_apesacrappin
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· Score: 5, Funny
Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?
When I was in school, one of my professors (the guy who's work is talked about in this/. article) told me this story about a large magnet. Keep in mind, I'm recalling this from memory, and I was in college when it was told to me. Therefore, it is an approximation of the actual events that took place.
A large cylindrical magnet was being delivered to a second floor lab. By large I mean 5 feet in diameter and 3.5 feet wide. Because of university policy, the university maintence crew was to move the magnet to its final destination. After getting it onto the service elevator, they arrived on the second floor.
From the service elevator, the magnet had to move almost the length of the building, turn a corner, and go about another twenty feet to the lab. The three men moving the magnet got it out of the elevator, and started down the hall.
Being a large heavy object, they had to push really hard to get it moving. They kept pushing really hard all the way down the hall. Not being physicists, they assumed that the magnet would stop rolling when they stoped pushing. They were quite wrong. Not only did the magnet not stop when they stopped pushing, but it didn't stop when it hit the wall of the corner room. The exterior wall of the building didn't stop it either. It came to rest embeded deep in the ground outside the lab.
It was much funnier when he told it.
--
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
funny cyclotron joke
by
rudiger
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· Score: 5, Funny
stop me if you have heard this one.
two atoms are flying around in a cyclotron and one says to the other, "i think i lost an electron", to which the other replied, "are you sure?".
the first atom responded "yes, i'm positve."
AHAHAHAHA GEEK HUMOUR IS FUNNY:)
Atom smashers, the new hobby
by
atomicdragon
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· Score: 2, Funny
It's great that this guy has built a cyclotron, and a good looking one at that. But I believe others have done something similar. I've seen a TV story about someone who has constructed smaller cyclotron.
If you are interested in building a particle accelerator, I would suggest a Betatron. I was able to make a 3 MeV one (large enough to generate positrons, my goal in constructing it) without much trouble in high school. I just followed the instructions for building one giving by the inventor Donald Kerst in his paper (don't remember the exact paper name) and used parts from the local hardware store. It was small, only a few pounds, and only cost around $100. The nice thing about a Betatron, is that it is extremely stable and self-corrects small deviations in magnetic field (in other words, you can do a crappy construction job and still have it work). The hardest part was finding decent vacuum equipment.
Now if I just let it run 24/7 for 5,220 trillion years, I will have myself a pound of antimatter.
Re:Things that go boom
by
AJWM
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· Score: 4, Funny
Ah, but the real trick is in clicking those subcritical masses together quickly enough, and holding them together long enough, for the whole thing to go "KABOOM!" rather than just fizzle into a scattered mess of melted and shattered chunks of fissionable material that has just showered you and some of the neighbors with a very lethal dose of gamma and neutrons.
Recall that some nuclear workers have seen the pretty blue flash from nuclear material accidentally going critical and lived long enough to tell the cleanup crew about it.
Same principle as burning gunpowder in a little pile (makes a nice ball of flame) vs confined as in a firecracker (makes a nice if not Earth-shattering kaboom).
-- -- Alastair
large magnets, eh?
by
Jonny+290
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· Score: 4, Funny
Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?"
Yup. It's currently keeping my kid's lifesize crayon rendition of the Sistine Chapel stuck to my 46 foot tall, 1400 ton refrigerator.
-- Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
Building your own accelerator
by
panurge
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· Score: 4, Funny
Years ago Scientific American (dead tree edition ) published a series of articles on how to build a backyard atom smasher of the Cockcroft and Walton variety using a Van der Graaf accelerator. As I remember, it reached about 3 MeV, three times better than this cyclotron, and was a practical home build for someone without the Rutgers back lot to call on. There was a whole lot of stuff in the article about lead lined aprons, though given the usual cliches about backyard inventors and the opposite sex, I'm surprised this was considered necessary.
There seem to be two schools of backyard engineering thought: High voltage (lots of polished metal spheres and weird looking insulation, with blue sparks) and high current (big evil looking coils with water cooling circuits.) Perhaps the two camps could collaborate to build a really big mass spectrograph, which (given enough cheap electricity) you can use to extract your own enriched uranium. I'm sure Charlton Heston could be persuaded to argue that the right to bear arms extends to home tactical nukes.
-- Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Slashdot Mirror
An alien experiment that went seriously south and created a massive black hole.
Remember, kids, don't try this at home!
This is what seems to be a very cool application of putting old equipment to good work. And hey, if it turns out that it doesn't work, he has a cheep and effective form of birth control...
*shudders* Me thinks of the advertisments for DIY permenant birth control... =O
If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business. -Thackeray, William
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!!
Er, sorry, I'll go sit in the corner now.
Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?
Yes, I keep it right here, next to my server backup tapes.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Now I can really get Spiderman by trapping him in another dimension! Mwhwhahahahha.
Question is, what are they going to do with it? :P
Same thing any good physicist does -- try to take over the world!
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
Next on slashdot: building xray machines from discarded monitors for fun and profit.
Ray: "You know, it just occured to me that we really haven't had a successful test of this equipment."
Egon: "I blame myself."
Peter: "So do I."
Ray: "Well, no sense in worrying about it now."
Peter: "Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back."
--"You can lead a man to knowledge, but you can't make him think."
We better not let terrorists get ahold of the protons; after all all nuclear weapons are made of them!
Then again I know I wouldn't want -any- of my friends that are even remotely intelligent (and even less those that are not intelligent) to be messing with particle acceleration...
"Mom.... You did say you wanted a skylight didn't you?"
President W also said that he knows Iraq is building nuclear weapons because "they have bought aluminum tubes from other countries". And some people dare to say there's no hard evidence!
So I think that, to protect the american way of life (ie, the right to bomb the shit out of anyone who doesn't give us their oil for free), we should ban aluminum.
A year from now, parents will be lined up at Toys 'R Us locations only to find that Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il have pre-ordered 90% of the shipping units.
..the elusive "five dollar plasma weapon!".
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
These amateur experiments are very impressive but I'm always worried that the lack of safety guidance will lead imitators into trouble. For example, with this equipment there are potential safety issues if the experiment is replicated in the southern hemisphere.
In the southern hemisphere or, more specifically, south of the topic of Capricorn, the particles will need to spin the other way.
This can be achieved in many ways; none of which were mentioned in the original article.
For example;
1) Turn the equipment upside down.
2) Use magnets of opposite polarity.
3) Use anti-protons instead of protons,
Just one of these needs to be done to transofrm a southern cyclotron from a deathtrap into a fun and safe piece of equipment.
"Question is, what are they going to do with it?"
PROFIT!
But they don't work without neutrons. It's the goddamn neutral particles' fault. (And besides, like, what have the Swiss done for us lately anyways?)
I am in high school and very interested in physics and it would be an awsome project to work on something like this.
Where have I heard this type of thing before?
You may think this is the ultimate chick "magnet," but personally, I think that even if fusion reactors only get a second place in the science fair these days, you should try to build a Tokomak. There's just something sexy about how they look.
After the fair, no matter how you do, you can take a promising date to see it, dim the lights and crank it up and see if sub-nuclear particles are all that get excited. Who knows, maybe you'll finally discover the joys of practical applications for combinatorial physics, where books have only given you theories to feed your fantasies...
(moderators: please don't "nuke" me too badly on this one)
Get off my launchpad!
Erm... the average person can't work a VCR let alone build a cyclotron... hell they probalby think a cyclotron is one of those exercise bikes from the shopping channel.
To take an idea from Tom Smith- "307 Ale me lads, 307 ale....the finest drink that any bar has ever had for sale...." Bottoms up! TDD
Now that's a real friend..someone who helps you build your own cyclotron.
When I was in school, one of my professors (the guy who's work is talked about in this /. article) told me this story about a large magnet. Keep in mind, I'm recalling this from memory, and I was in college when it was told to me. Therefore, it is an approximation of the actual events that took place.
A large cylindrical magnet was being delivered to a second floor lab. By large I mean 5 feet in diameter and 3.5 feet wide. Because of university policy, the university maintence crew was to move the magnet to its final destination. After getting it onto the service elevator, they arrived on the second floor.
From the service elevator, the magnet had to move almost the length of the building, turn a corner, and go about another twenty feet to the lab. The three men moving the magnet got it out of the elevator, and started down the hall.
Being a large heavy object, they had to push really hard to get it moving. They kept pushing really hard all the way down the hall. Not being physicists, they assumed that the magnet would stop rolling when they stoped pushing. They were quite wrong. Not only did the magnet not stop when they stopped pushing, but it didn't stop when it hit the wall of the corner room. The exterior wall of the building didn't stop it either. It came to rest embeded deep in the ground outside the lab.
It was much funnier when he told it.
Still, with a plan, you only get the best you can imagine. I'd always hoped for something better than that. -CP
stop me if you have heard this one.
:)
two atoms are flying around in a cyclotron and one says to the other, "i think i lost an electron", to which the other replied, "are you sure?".
the first atom responded "yes, i'm positve."
AHAHAHAHA GEEK HUMOUR IS FUNNY
It's great that this guy has built a cyclotron, and a good looking one at that. But I believe others have done something similar. I've seen a TV story about someone who has constructed smaller cyclotron. If you are interested in building a particle accelerator, I would suggest a Betatron. I was able to make a 3 MeV one (large enough to generate positrons, my goal in constructing it) without much trouble in high school. I just followed the instructions for building one giving by the inventor Donald Kerst in his paper (don't remember the exact paper name) and used parts from the local hardware store. It was small, only a few pounds, and only cost around $100. The nice thing about a Betatron, is that it is extremely stable and self-corrects small deviations in magnetic field (in other words, you can do a crappy construction job and still have it work). The hardest part was finding decent vacuum equipment. Now if I just let it run 24/7 for 5,220 trillion years, I will have myself a pound of antimatter.
Ah, but the real trick is in clicking those subcritical masses together quickly enough, and holding them together long enough, for the whole thing to go "KABOOM!" rather than just fizzle into a scattered mess of melted and shattered chunks of fissionable material that has just showered you and some of the neighbors with a very lethal dose of gamma and neutrons.
Recall that some nuclear workers have seen the pretty blue flash from nuclear material accidentally going critical and lived long enough to tell the cleanup crew about it.
Same principle as burning gunpowder in a little pile (makes a nice ball of flame) vs confined as in a firecracker (makes a nice if not Earth-shattering kaboom).
-- Alastair
Anyone else happen to have a 4600 lb. magnet lying around?"
Yup. It's currently keeping my kid's lifesize crayon rendition of the Sistine Chapel stuck to my 46 foot tall, 1400 ton refrigerator.
Hey Taco! Looks like you're using the "infinite monkeys and typewriters" scheme to generate Ask Slashdots again...
There seem to be two schools of backyard engineering thought: High voltage (lots of polished metal spheres and weird looking insulation, with blue sparks) and high current (big evil looking coils with water cooling circuits.) Perhaps the two camps could collaborate to build a really big mass spectrograph, which (given enough cheap electricity) you can use to extract your own enriched uranium. I'm sure Charlton Heston could be persuaded to argue that the right to bear arms extends to home tactical nukes.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.