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College Freshman Builds Fusion Reactor
Aiua writes "The Deseret Morning News is reporting that a Utah State University freshman has built a nuclear fusion reactor and compares how the student is similar to Philo T. Farnsworth (the inventor of the television and designer of the plans for a fusion reactor)."
Is his name Dexter by any chance?
Philo T. Farnsworth? Is he any relation to Hubert Farnsworth, inventor of the smelloscope?
deuteron ions
Oh, cold fusion.
Nothing to see here.
Mr. Fusion! I wonder if he had any help from Doc and Marty?
Jerry Fletcher,
Privacy Protection By:
http://www.cotse.net/servicedetails.html
obviously this kid has created the reactor in order to forward his terrorist agenda of underming U.S. society by blowing up SCO
.
why does the porridge bird lay his eggs in the air?
With a fusion reactor, I could finally generate that 1.21 Gigawatts of power needed to travel back in time. I've always had this idea of betting on horse races in the past and.......
Life is not for the lazy.
That kid obviously has waaaay too much time on his hands. I can't imagine doing that my freshman year.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
Boy, it seems as though Utah has invented yet another way to do fusion... didn't a pair of scientists from Utah already invent fusion once before? What were their names? Pons and Fleischman?
Oh yeah, I forgot... that line of investigation went cold.
On the other hand, wouldn't the FBI be looking hard at him now that has built something like this?
Check out Fusor.net.
Yawn.
To me, that read something about TV a fusion re-actor in one. (must be that damn research at the English University) So I can get sweet reception while I'm banging up some burgers in my FusionOvenTV(R) Not only that, but I'm sure that it rips the pants of any plasma screen.
Karma whoring
The article makes it sound like a neutron detector. How amazing is this really anyway. I mean the kid has smarts, obviously, but he didn't make anything new, did he?
Why can't we get any bigger pictures of it? Those are too small to see hardly anything.
...Building it would get him older college chicks?
$5 says this is proven to be a clever hoax soon.
You think this wouldn't be all over the papers?
What I love is how the article is completely free of those "fact" things. All I see is a tv screen with some molecules on it. I wrote a program that put molecules on a tv screen when I was a freshman too.
I don't know. If its real, that's excellent. But my BS-o-meter is screaming.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
... this puts new meaning into the words Freshman 15, 15 minutes of fame, 15 megawatts of Power, 15 years of trying to top this, 15 attempts at suicide, 15 divorces.
I mean, it's cool he could do this and all, but there's already 30 of these around the country, they don't produce any excess energy, other than that from what will soon be hundreds of little slash.fingers merrily typing away... Misleading intro to this story - I was all set for some kind of great breakthrough, and instead I get the equivalent of a SCO press staement - a story, some hot air, but nothing of real substance. Or am I missing some greater consequence of this?
greater than or less than? Or is this another
"tv show???????????????????"
If this is just another hoax, how did it make the
first page here?
I guess he's supposed to be a smarty (even though the article says he followed someone else's instructions on how to build the reactor), but I sure hope he knows what he's doing so his classmates won't have to deal with growing extra legs and stuff...
No, it's not cold fusion. It's been around for a long time, and it's been mentioned here before. See the wikipedia entry at:
_ Fu sor
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farnsworth-Hirsch
This thing has a vaccum pump attatched to it, I wonder why?
Either way, that would be one part you could omit if this were launched into space. Could anyone familiar with how this thing works tell me if it would run in space?
He got second place in a science competition? It makes me wonder what project won first place. An advanced prototype of a nuclear fission weapon using kitchen grease as fissionable material? How manay days is it until April 1st?
"Others thought it was cool, too. Wallace began winning contests -- local, state, national -- culminating in second place in the International Intel Science and Engineering Fair last May in Cleveland. He's now beginning work on a USU physics degree."
What in the name of all that is geeky won FIRST place??
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
I, for one, welcome our new college freshman overlord.
He always tells us that you terrorists are here in the US trying to get nuclear secrets! Now that you, Allah, have posted with your user name, I can report you to the FBI and have them stop you in your evil tracks! Evil-doer, you're going down!
I tnhik you mneat to wtire say.
"Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs. "
I guess we have a new winner for what to do with AOL CDs.
My main concern is how he was just able to go somewhere and buy heavy water. That's not something you should be able to up and buy. Also, it's damned expensive, IIRC.
Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs.
Um...another "fusion" story from Utah, home of "cold fusion"? Excuse me while I fake interest :)
How long before Islamic terrorists will use this as a weapon to kill innocent civilians, including women and children?
(modded as 'troll' but I think the moderator missed the tongue in cheek.)
Heck, if it works as advertised, it's already killed the secretary on the floor below and her 3 year old daughter who came in one afternoon when she couldn't get childcare - their hair will start falling out any moment now. It will also have killed the inventer, but such stupidity as voluntarily standing next to an unshielded fusion reactor exempts him from the label "innocent".
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
He isn't a die hard nerd that sits around reading books all day, getting straight A's, and spending time doing various things the stereotypical nerd would do. It goes to show that we need to understand that people don't all see things the same, learn the same, and fit in the same model we believe works so well. This college student is more a mechanic than any typical scientist.
I point all this to intellectual property. He was fortunately able to obtain most of his material cheaply and easily, but what about most hobbyists that want to fidle with new technology? Where do they get the money for new tools, machines, etc? If we applied an open source model to intellectual property and treated ideas not as property, but as what they really are, then we could accelerate scientific and technological progress greatly. What this college student did is quite amazing. The thing he built is only found in top notch institutions. I just think we need more plagiarism prevention, not patents. Btw, I'm sorry for being somewhat off-topic, but I feel that there is an important lesson to be learned here.
Question everything.
A Beowulf cluster of these.
You thought it, but I was brave enought to say it.
A kid can make a fusion reactor but our best scientists cant make one that actually works?!!
However I think they can make ones that are power producers but companies and governments are afraid to release any sort of cheap energy, then they'd lose the power they have over economies across the world.
Good way to win a Darward Award while still living if you ask me...
Blockwars: free, multiplayer, and with new features!
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs.
RIAA: "They wouldn't be CD's with pirated music on them would they ??"
Wallace: "No sir, Mr. RIAA-man. But you can have a look yourself. I keep them over there in that nuclear reactor. Fill your boots."
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Is Eating Blueberry Pie Bad for You?
p
And
Chaotic Fluids: An Examination of Phase Transitions in Taylor-Couette Flow
I can see the second.. but the first!?!?!?
http://www.sciserv.org/isef/results/grnd2003.as
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
They found a broken turbo molecular pump lying forgotten at Deseret Industries
Those damn broken turbo molecular pumps lying around all over the place. Somebody needs to do something about that.
the /. editors got suckered on this one - if you RTFA you'll see that it isn't actually a fusion reactor or reaction at all. What it is is a deuterium ion plasma generator. While not actually fusion, Deuterium ion plasma holds some promise for fusion research. However, it is - as the article states - useful as a neutron radiation generator. That's mostly what this kid has accomplished - NOT fusion.
I was once an ISEF finalist/winner. "Second place" is a designation given to a substantial number of projects at the International fair. There are like 5-10 blue (first), 10-30 red (second), etc. The biggest winners are in a seperate catagory -- things like the, "BLAH T. BLAH SCIENCE AWARD" that includes a trip to Japan, or a trip to see the Nobel ceremonies, etc etc. Interestingly, building a project like this is really only a certain level of merit at a real science fair (like ISEF). I used to build devices like that -- and get awards like second place. The real thing the judges are looking for is scientific/research content. For instance, the kid may have built this and got it to work, but did he improve on the design? did he measure the efficiency of the system? did he use the device to study some effect X, Y, or Z? This may sound crazy, but at that level the high school students are expected to perform at the level of grad student researchers. The winning doesn't really matter, though -- the kid got a postiive experience that will stay with him for the rest of his life...!
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
It's a plasma generator that emits neutrons if he just copied Farnsworth. The article doesn't mention any modifications. Not a true advance in reactor technology
I think the main notable feature about this is that he's probably the youngest person to make one of these, and while it isn't a "fusion reactor" it probably is a good prototype research tool for physics departments with limited budgets.
This reminds me of the furor 25 years ago more or less when a Princeton undergrad designed a nuclear bomb for his senior thesis. It wasn't so much that it had never been done, as that nobody expected an undergrad to be able to do it without access to classified materials.
We are the 198 proof..
Unfortunately, Wallace's IEC, like every other IEC ever built, doesn't get even close to break-even. Their primary utility is, as the article mentions, as a neutron source (and in fact that's what they're usually used for). There are some folks that are hopeful they can find a way to improve the efficiency of IEC fusion and exceed break-even (Robert Bussard, of Bussard ram-jet fame, for example), but no one's managed to actually demonstrate a working, energy-generating IEC yet.
Is that the next generation nintendo?
he prays to me in lodge meetings..........
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=78742&cid=6982 654
This is no hoax, its an effect that has been known for many decades. It's just that no one, not even this guy have found a way to produce excess energy from it (as in producing more energy that it consumes in triggering the fusion)
... but they'd just be an inefficient curiosity too.
This clever guy just happened to do it himself.
Its no big deal, no huge discovery, just an interesting scientific device. - Something to make the ignorant masses wonder how there couldnt be enough power to meet the US's demands during the big black out when we mastered fusion energy years ago.
The tinkerer deserves a pat on the back for making it work, however he deserves no prizes. He merely repeated well known science rather than doing something new.
Heck, I'd be growing diamonds in my back yard if I could afford to buy the super huge vintage world war 2 press at an industrial site down the road from me
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
I haven't RTFA'd it yet, but lets renember that making a fusion reactior is a lot different than making a fusion reactor that can generate more energy than is used to prime it. The former we've been doing for years, the latter - making one that outputs more energy than is put into it is the real trick.
You can see here.
Philo T. Farnsworth (the inventor of the television... )
The inventor of television is not necessarily Farnsworth -- there are several scientists with good claims on the title (including John Logie Baird, after whom the Logie television awards are named).
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Who took first? Oliver Wendell Jones?
Please, this is just bs. First off anybody can build one of these, schematics and tips and even a forum on getting help from others can be found at www.fusor.net . And this guys wins a science fair for no original thought. I guess the judges didn't know how to use google.
Actually, Philo T. Farnsworth was a resident of Idaho, he waw just born in Utah and moved when he was 11.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
A good fusor reference with some close-up pictures of a working device is available here.
...this is a lot better effort by a kid (and a great read, too). I mean - this guy's doctoral thesis got classified Top Secret, etc... *and* he got to hang out with The Big Guys of Nuclear Physics and Weapons Making... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D068803351 2/thebrowsersbookwA/102-5759479-8637704
Like I said, I am not denigrating the kids work or his obvious smarts and the way he applied them - what I am getting at is the story title "here" was misleading. If the device was a Tesla coil, the headline would've claimed "Young Inventor Tames Lightning!"...
The Bush Administration announced a military attack on Utah in order to destroy an incipient WMD program....
I'VE BEEN LOOKING ALL OVER FOR THAT!
Karma? Karma? I don't need no stinkin' karma.
First reaction: Cool. Incredibly frickin' cool
Second reaction: How much does it take to power the operation of this thing (fuel, any input juice to get the process going), and how much power output does it generate? It doesn't seem too big, perhaps it might even be able to power a land-based vehicle or something similar? At the very least with a few regulators it should keep my PC's from running up the power bill, and with the existing low radiation a little lead shielding should make it safer than my microwave oven...
This is from Utah, after all...
... he will never *ever* get laid. Ever. Period.
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
Too poor to buy pricey deuterium gas, Craig bought a container of deuterium oxide, or heavy water, for 20 bucks and came up with a way to make it a gas and get rid of the accompanying oxygen by passing it over heated magnesium filings.
:-)
And if the fusion reactor doesn't work, he can always make a fortune selling deuterium gas cheaper than anybody else
They found a neutron detector in an Idaho Falls scrap metal yard...They found a broken turbo molecular pump lying forgotten at Deseret Industries.
Damn, I'm going dumpster diving in Idaho Falls.
It says that there are about 30 such reactors around. The special thing about this one is, that is was made from scrap parts. Please understand that there's really not all that much fusion happening here, definiteley not enough to get any energy output from it, you have to put energy in to heat the stuff up.
It's probably all really simple: every once in a while a deuterium core will tunnel into another deuterium core and cling to it (the actual process to get to He is probably a bit more complicated). That's fusion happening, only the odds are very bad. Create deuterium plasma, cage it with electromagnetic fields to apply some pressure and raise the energy high enough so the odds will get better. Aparently they get it to a few neutrons per minute (they measure 4 per minute).
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Yeah, but is it a breeder reactor? He should at least wait until the scavenger hunt starts.
If I recall, the fusion bomb requires a good amount of nearly pure U-235 or weapons grade Plutonium. In addition, the equations for 'critical mass' and the 'implosion vectors' for the fission "trigger" for a fusion bomb are TIGHTLY guarded. Those are the limiting factor in building bombs.
It's not too hard to make things radiate. VERY hard to make them go BOOM.
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Honest question here....
If there is no fusion going on, where are the neutrons coming from?
As someone who participated in this science fair. I spent much of my time working in labs, contacting professionals, ensuring safety in the lab, as well as thorough and detailed demonstration of the development of such research. My endeavor lasted three years, with much frustration in recieving materials, gathering funding (mostly personal), as well as balancing an accelerated education with my projects.
While his project is surprisingly complex and I am sure safe and well thought out, it is quite difficult to demonstrate such an accomplishment in a concise and easily acceptable form. There are limitations given to contestants involving time to present, space, and strict rules regarding what projects are allowed to be running during the interview and booth judging.
As far as who has actually won first place in the physics section of the fair, following is a list of the overall, first and second place winners, as taken from the intel science fair website:
Intel ISEF Best of Category Award of $5,000 for Top First Place Winner
PH053
Chaotic Fluids: An Examination of Phase Transitions in Taylor-Couette Flow
Mairead Mary McCloskey, 17, Loreto College, Coleraine, Co Derry, Northern Ireland
First Award of $3,000
PH029
Is Eating Blueberry Pie Bad for You?
Jennifer Anne D'Ascoli, 17, Academy of the Holy Names, Albany, New York
PH053
Chaotic Fluids: An Examination of Phase Transitions in Taylor-Couette Flow
Mairead Mary McCloskey, 17, Loreto College, Coleraine, Co Derry, Northern Ireland
Second Award of $1,500
PH005
The Effect of Salinity on the Production and Duration of Antibubbles
Michael J. Pizer, 14, University School of Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
PH040
Magnetoplasmadynamics: Ionization and Magnetic Field
Ray Chengchuan He, 19, Hempfield High School, Landisville, Pennsylvania
PH046
Nuclear Fusion Reactor Apparatus
Craig J. Wallace, 18, Spanish Fork High School, Spanish Fork, Utah
PH054
Electron-Phonon Interactions in Carbon Nanotubes
Edward Joesph Su, 18, William G. Enloe High School, Raleigh, North Carolina
OBLIVION!-
My Sucker Detector is presently pinging at about 300 clicks a minute...
Mnem
"I see you've set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public."
"...a neutron detector in an Idaho Falls scrap metal yard...." -- Idaho metal yards are coming up in the world... used to just be able to find metal... now you can find whole particle accelerators!! Woohoo!!
:D
"Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs." -- Thank you AOL for your endless contributions... I was just thinking, maybe later I'll build my own neutron modulator... have to finish my scramjet engine first though... oh yeah, and walk the dog. But I'll get to it after that.
"They found a broken turbo molecular pump lying forgotten at Deseret Industries." -- OH! I wish you had told me you needed one, I was just down at Radio Shack pricing turbo molecular pumps... Had one in my hand this morning, turned it over and it said -- Made in North Korea.
"Too poor to buy pricey deuterium gas" -- Again... I have endless supplies of gas it seems. Might have been useful, for both of us.
"Craig bought a container of deuterium oxide, or heavy water, for 20 bucks and came up with a way to make it a gas and get rid of the accompanying oxygen by passing it over heated magnesium filings." -- Craig, do you keep your magnesium filings dry? Mine tend to attract water. I would love to be a fly on your wall come Christmas time... nothing like a Helmholtz coil and Oscilloscope hanging out of your stockings when you come down the stairs!
Seriously... What address do you live at? I'd like to take your dad out back and whoop him for raising the bar... now all my kids are gonna want to build their own fusion devices. "So honey how about doing a solar system for a science project?" -- "No thanks dad, my friends and I are going build our own sun instead."
Hope you enjoyed this... it was meant in good humor!
Why should you not be able to buy it?
It's not radioctive. It's not all that useful for much. It is interesting chemcially.
It's not that expensive, though certainly much more expensive than normal water... but compared to other chemicals, it's not that pricey.
The "Heavy" in heavy water refers to the fact that it is heavy, not that it is full of dangerous radiation, metals, or anything else.... You could drink it.
Others thought it was cool, too. Wallace began winning contests -- local, state, national -- culminating in second place in the International Intel Science and Engineering Fair last May in Cleveland. He's now beginning work on a USU physics degree.
who got first place?
-pyrrho
This reminds me of an old Bloom County strip where Oliver Wendell Jones built a nuclear bomb for his class science project. The teacher asked him where he got the fissionable material and he said he scraped all the glowing stuff off thousands of watch dials...
"Attention students! Fire drill!"
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
From everything I have read about farnsworth fusors, it really says that it is a nutron generator up to a certain threshhold, up to which point the fusion process is self-sustaining - of course, that is if the static electric containment field holds during that time.
there is an account whereby farnsworth bypassed this threshhold and the neutron generation rate went off the scale and continued for 30 minutes after he turned off the machine (stopped feeding deutrium? i forgot).
so, maybe it's not sustained cold fusion right now, but doesn't mean it can't be with more tuning.
I mean, if nothing happens, he has at least 4 years in college for this!
My life in the land of the rising sun.
"They found a neutron detector in an Idaho Falls scrap metal yard. Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs. They found a broken turbo molecular pump lying forgotten at Deseret Industries." Did they find this stuff next to the broken particle accelerators? Or maybe under the old cray supercomputers?
So Bush is off, halfway around the world, stretching our military thinner than the artist's cut in an RIAA contract, while here at home some college freshman is building nuclear reactors.
How is this supposed to prevent terrorism?
Looks like we need to kick Dubya out of the White House and replace him with an M.D.
drive to sco parking lot with reactor and have nuclear accident. i guess parking across the street would suffice.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs. .. a use for AOL CDs
So the kid is smart. Big fat hairy deal. His fusion reactor still doesn't generate more energy than its input. Thus, it works no better than the one I built last night with beer bottles and styrofoam cups.
Wake me up when someone builds a real working fusion reactor.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
College Freshman Builds Fusion Reactor
For a freshman, that's rather smart. He'll probably be successful in his studies.
I mean, not everybody can build a fusion rector in his freshman year. I'm finishing my master's thesis and even I cannot get the reaction running properly yet.
And then the US government will probably sell it to them. Isn't that how things have worked in the past?
Some posts are saying that he'll never get laid, while others are commenting something about a 'breeder'. C'mon folks! Which is it?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I say "Good on him." When did any of us do this kind of thing. I couldn't care less that it doesn't blow up the universe or his room at the university. He got off his ^*$# and did something that not many others would attempt let alone achieve. Did his father help? Sure; but, the father didn't do it, either! What an achievement.
Looking at space, radio, science and computing from a 'down-under' amateur enthusiast perspective.
Yeah, it's of consequence cause a high school grad/college freshman cobbled together a low-energy neutron generator from junkyard parts. This is like building a B1 bomber from the crap on Junkyard Wars.
And it's uplifting, neato and entertaining. A rarity.
Reporter: ...All we know right now is that there is a really big hole in the ground and the University is no more. It looks like a nuclear reaction occurred, but there's no radioactive fallout.
News Anchor: Bob, are there any theories about what might have happened?
Reporter: The only thing that appears to be a possibility is that the Cold Fusion Dreamers club was meeting tonight to try out some new ideas. Other than that we have no information...
but if deuterium fuses into helium couldn't you watch the increase in helium atoms in the near vacuum instead of monitoring neutrons which may or may not be coming from outer space? Helium is after all not that common in air and even less in a vacuum.
This would seem to be a more appropriate test of whether fusion has been achieved or not. Maybe the equipment costs more than what is being employed though and it factored in the decision of what to include into the system. Maybe somebody can setup a paypal system for this guy and we can get him a helium detector.
I'm not supposed to get jigs in it!
1. Get some deuterium (or heavy water and magnesium filings)
2. ???
3. Fusion!
Better watch out mate, the secret service might be after you for building that Weapon of Mass Destruction.
i read the article, the kid is awesome, not because what he built is new (it isn't), but because he accomplished something many would have thought to be impossible. he built a homebrew neutron generator.. i figured while reading the comments i might see some awesome insight, related stories, or really funny jokes, but instead all i see is people griping about the article. no where in the /. blurb is "cold fusion" mentioned, if you honestly assumed that a college freshman building any type of device that relates to fusion built a reactor capable of cold fusion without any mention of that being the case then congratulation! you're an idiot! meanwhile i know one college freshman who won't be struggling with a lack of job opportunities when hes done gettin his macguyver-style learn on.
btw... where exactly do you go to just buy a little heavy water?
It would probably help if you read the article.
It is not exactly a large scale reactor churning out stray atomic particles.
I for one commend him on his effort, and challenge all the people who bag him to do any better or the same.
Keep up the good work, mate!
before Mr. Fusion Home Energy Generators are available?
(See uid if you don't get it...)
Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen
Wallace began winning contests -- local, state, national -- culminating in second place in the International Intel Science and Engineering Fair last May in Cleveland.
Anybody know what beat a WORKING FUSION REACTOR in a science fair?
Are you thinking what I am thinking... ;)
Well, obviously, a beowulf cluster of nuetron modulators, what else
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs.
Apparently, my mother's computer is not the only thing an AOL cd can slow down.
Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 90% of the people on /. are too young to catch your reference.
"Too poor to buy pricey deuterium gas, Craig bought a container of deuterium oxide, or heavy water, for 20 bucks"
Forgive my ignorance, but exactly where does one come across a container of deuterium oxide for $20??? Discount Nuclear Supplies R' Us?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Farnsworth fusors have been built by the dozens by many amateurs. In fact, anyone with little knowledge of high voltages and some crafty skills can make one. It's nothing more than a chamber which turns deuterium into plasma and a pump to keep it going. Some additionally have a neutron counter. Many believe that pushing the Farnsworth fusor is the precursor to cold fusion, but many more disagree. Nevertheless, this is nothing to be excited about. It would probably be more challanging to put together an erector set.
A blog like any other.
Kinda makes me wonder what ever happened to the teenager than tried to make a nuclear bomb out of smoke alarms. Seriously, it is amazing what you can do with round the house items nowadays.
Come get some....
Read me Dr. Memory?
[I'm assuming your .sig is a Firesign reference.]
Program Intellivision!
while attempting to answer the test-question, "Prove that Cold-Fusion is impossible,"
discovers that it's easy to build a low-yield H-bomb using off the shelf components,
and proceeds to build one?
If it's not Consolidated Lint, it's just fuzz.
"Lisa, in this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
Like it matters. When we finally do acheive cold fusion, here on slashdot everybody will argue how much better PHP is, anyway.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
American's are the leading experts in throwing things away.
I think it's mostly a human interest story with a very misleading title. It's sort of like some kid creating a 4 bit microprocessor with a magnifying glass and a soldering iron. He wins the science project, but he didn't do anything really new. The cool factor is there, but ultimately, it doesn't matter too much.
On the other hand, you can't deny the coolness factor. Wish I'd had that sort of support when I was a kid. My mom said I read too much science fiction and told me to go outside and get some exercise.
"It's real and we can touch it, so least we know where we stand." - Jack Burton
You don't even need electricity for that. Just mix beryllium with a good source of alpha particles like radium. Beryllium 9 undergoes an (alpha,n) fusion reaction with an incident alpha particle, generating carbon 12 and a loose neutron.
Beryllium 9 is great because it's essentially two helium nuclei held together by a loose neutron with a very low binding energy (1.66 MeV). It's almost the nuclear equivalent of an alkali metal. You can even pop the thing apart with a gamma ray if you don't want to bother with alpha emitters. For those who worry about berylliosis, boron 11 also works. The (alpha,n) reaction yields nitrogen 14.
This was the setup that Chadwick used for detecting the neutron in 1932. Back then neutrons were referred to as "beryllium radiation" (sort of like how electrons were first called "cathode rays") and were wrongly thought to be some sort of strongly penetrating photons. Chadwick surrounded his beryllium source with wax and measured the energies of the protons that got knocked out by elastic collisions. Wax is a great moderator because it's full of protons, and the neutron slams into a proton in the wax and loses all its energy like a billiard ball. The neutron that emerges from the wax is a slow neutron. Slow neutrons are generally much more useful than fast neutrons because they spend more time in your fissionable material, and there is no Coulomb barrier that they need to overcome so they react with nuclei very easily.
I shouldn't say too much more or else I'll get myself placed on the Bush Administration's new list of 100,000 maniacs. But if you're building a fission bomb, these reactions are really handy because your implosion doesn't last very long and you need to get hold of lots of slow neutrons in a hurry. If you're building a nuclear reactor for power generation, you're under less of a tight schedule and can probably wait a millisecond or two for neutrons from cosmic rays or spontaneous fissions to get your pile going.
... it is a wonder the student actually said what he did. for now he is surely registered as a potential nuclear terrorist and propably also as producer of WMD's...
".Sig Stealer" was here
Fushion Reactor job being outsourced to india. The Department of Energy expects to
save 45% of the student's $100 weekly allowance.
We will bring you the news as it develops.
I'm wondering, whatever happened to the giant fusion reactor they were building in Japan, the one that had man-sized conduits with the three magnetic things spiraling around them, that was supposed to achieve fusion reactions on a large scale?
Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs.
I knew I was collecting the AOL CDs for something.
stop bagging this guy out. he is better than you'll ever be. You're just end users waitin to be ownz. Mediocre programmers having your work outsourced to India.
From your friendly patent attorney.
Second place in the Intel Science Talent Search this
year was won by a high school kid from Oregon
Episcopal with a very similar device:
http://www.sciserv.org/sts/62sts/winners.asp
Check out the hottie who won!
He actually built two at home, and then convinced
NASA to let him trade up.
From the article: "I bet I'm the only high school
student that has one," Craig Wallace said.
Guess again pal...
Remember the episode when they go meet god and everyone else goes to hell, even if they were good people of other relgions and god said Mormonism was the Right(tm) religion.
This little device? It's a toy. He found mechanical tricks to get the purity and the accuracy he needed. The main reason Farnsworth could make such a thing from Farnsworth's design is that in the 1930s none of the "junk parts" Wallace used were available. Hell, he got his deuterium from a twenty dollar can of heavy water. Farnsworth could only dream of that.
If I were going to speculate on Wallace's future actions in any way, it wouldn't be one of these "atom bomb inventor" speculations. I expect his mechanical cleverness will save someone somewhere a great deal of money at some point. Cheaper missiles, cheaper shuttles or cheaper refrigerators, who knows.
I actually read quite a bit on these devices a few weeks ago when the cold fusion article came up on /.
One of the things I came across was Fusor, which is essentially a site for people who do this as a hobby.
The most interesting thing I found was a link to the work of a gentleman named Eric Lerner. He actually has a workable, scalable, power-generating reactor. His is based on "dense plasma focus". Thing is, he's already got the thing to 1 billion degrees - and he's going for the big time - the aneutronic p-B11 reaction. That only generates alpha particles - which can be directly converted into electricity. No nasty turbines or steam! Pretty amazing.
Does anyone remember this story?
cribPlease don't read my journal
Good point. I think you've made an excellent foniillcoiunhiiicpcliaicatfin.
Why, just yesterday I finished building my warp engine and as soon as I can collect enough beer cans to build the aluminum hull for my space ship, I'm going to Vulcan to visit Spock.
My frist reaction was "My God, the Slashdot editors have started a real paper!". Anyone know why it isn't called "Desert Morning News"? Was the founder dyslectic?
Money for nothing, pix for free
Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs.
Finally a use for all those AOL CDs!
This is just more evidence that the Internet is improving our lives. A science project such as this would have been barely imaginablie before the Internet.
It is also probable that the boy's access to information would have been too limited to compelete such a task without the Internet.
If corporations can be prevented from imprisoning this information for their short term profit, progress will be accelerated exponentially. It is essential that communication be kept free. Great discoveries are never made by old scientists (or should I say married scientists?). Therefore, young people need more access to information.
It seems that the monopoly profit model no longer "promote[s] the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Access to all information needs to be guaranteed for the future for progress. Profits are secondary to access.
Finally, if scientists are not tinkerers, what what is their purpose?
All data is speech. All speech is Free.
(sound of uncontrolled sobbing)
Debunking the "59 Deceits"
if a foreign student from, say, Pakistan had built such a device "from parts salvaged from junk yards and charity drops". Don't you think we'd see calls for a Junk Yard Security Management division of the DoHS?
Pretty sure John Logie Baird invented the television.
Hmm, get a life. You took that much time to type up something nobody is interested in? Sad fuck. Get a life. Now.
I know I am dumb.
Really dumb.
That is why I am asking this question . . . . . .
How do they get such smart minds ?
I mean, in my high school years, college years, post graduate years, I have read lots and lots of articles, but never in my (dumb) mind that I can think of doing the things (nuke fusion, cyclotron etc.) they do.
I bet if someone know how to make people having smart minds (and use them too) we won't have osama bin laden running around anymore.
I mean, there are so much more interesting to do than blowing up people, or crashing planes into WTC, or chanting "Allah the greatest" while slaughtering the innocent !
Unfortunately, this world is filled with dumb people, like me.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The basic problem is that ordinary implosion systems are metastable. You're trying to pull something together, but the only forces available push, rather than pull. If the detonation front develops any asymmetry, the system blows apart, instead of producing the huge pressures of a perfect implosion needed to trigger a nuclear reaction.
There are ways to get around the metastability problem. Many geometries were tried in the 1940s and 1950s. Exactly how it's done in more modern weapons is still classified. For a sense of current thinking, though, see A Novel Explosively Driven Flying Plate System. This recent paper from Los Alamos has both the simulated and actual results for a detonation system. This gives a sense of the development tools used.
And why this apparently off-topic minor rant? Because we're seeing it here. The ones who probably can't even change a bicycle tire say "Oh that's easy, probably just followed the instruction book", not having the slightest clue about how difficult it is to make something from disparate parts. The ones who have got a clue or have been involved in projects like this have an idea of how difficult it really is, but actually they have no idea of how huge and insuperable the barrier is to 99% of the population - because they themselves are hardwired to know where to start.
It's about disparate rewards. The same level of skill and application this guy showed, applied to basketball or acting, might get him a multimillion dollar income. Why don't we perceive someone who spends hours bouncing a little ball around as being sad and geeky and having too much time on his hands? Why does someone who pretends to be other people, often not very well, get paid so much more than an astronaut or a fighter pilot who does something really, really difficult and dangerous?
Naive ramblings, I guess, but in the conversion of the human race from savannah apes to civilisation, it wasn't the actors and the basketball players that worked out how to bang the rocks together and how to get one stone to stick on top of another.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
In my day we called it a moderator. Why didn't he just use charcoal, coal or graphite?
And another thing, I thought it was John Logie Baird that invented (mechanical) television and Marconi who invented magnetically-scanned television? Maybe in America, everything was invented by Americans independently of the rest of the world?
Stick Men
I would not necessarily call Philo Taylor Farnsworth the inventor of TV. Electronic TV, yes, along with transmission of TV signals (demonstrated in 1927), but Baird was the first to demonstrate a working "television" - a mechanical device, demonstrated in 1925. Farnsworth's used a scanning technique, much different in design to Baird's.
I think Baird was the first to get colour working (in WW2). There were many others too, such as Zworykin (invented similar things, parallel to Farnsworth), Du Mont (invented the CRT), and Nipkow (invented the scanning disk in 1884, the basis for mechanical TVs).
More info here and here.
-- Steve
Does anybody now the supposed mass defect involved in fusing two deuterium nuclei to arrive at a neutron and a tritium nucleus? The mass defect is carried away as a radiation of an energy related to mass. I would expect gamma radiation, so standing back is perhaps not such a dumb thing.
American proverb:
What can be built once can be built twice for only double the money.
Yes, I'm an American.
that's not fusion, it's not even close. it's a plasma, there's one in every flourescent lamp. i seroiusly doubt neutrons were produced, neutron flux is notoriously hard to measure, which is why the morons (uh, i mean mormons) in utah thought they had done more than they had before. if fusion were occuring, energy would be produced, lots of it. any neutrons produced would be the hot high velocity kind, not the kind that blow in an open window and foil attempts by the incompetant to measure a change or thier actual production. please, please, can we cut all federal funds to utah, and especially to this university? is there a way we can throw these knuckle draggers out of the unoin? this is truly, truly pathetic, and the public should, in theory, realize that nothing true is ever reported in that particular state....
What are you listening to? (http://megamanic.blogetery.com/)
I mean the title says nothing.
This can be repeating well-known stuff from literature, scientific speculation or genuine scientific research.
However what seems fishy to me is that some stuff needs expensive labs/devices. So it seems to me very unlikely that high-school students do this stuff without professional help.
Take e.g. the "ident. genes with NN" stuff.
This is either a bunch of worthless programs operating on some artificial test data or some professional institution provided them with test sets and probably even gave the starting point of the project.
Same for the RNA, Venus and asteriod projects.
FUSor had a college student with his own fusor about 1 and a half years ago. others are listed in their discussion forum. .. :D
the inventor of todays tv was, iirc a german named braun and radar? they did during the first world war not doppler of course but a range finder
i just hate oold stuff in slashy 8) keep postin anyways
Junkyard
Craig Wallace
????
Profit!
- "They misunderestimated me."
for building a MAME cabinet...
You didn't read the article either. It is fusion. It's just not self-sustained (only generating four neutrons a minute). It's still fusion.
Surely that was John Logie Baird, or is this some revisionist version of history taught only in the UK.
Craig built a neutron modulator
Looks like Mr.Crusher has some competition!
Well, the underlying topic at least.
;)
Tinkering like this will advance science at some point. Most good inventions had an air of mishap about them, something besides what was being researched was the important discovery.
It was extremely cool to go to the moon, a great feat of heroism and dedication. The most important technological advance made (for society) wasn't rocketry but probably how to aggregate large quantities of data.
There are probably lot better examples of what i'm talking about. Got any? Use the reply link
I am the Barber of Seville.
I built a warp drive in jr. high, but you don't see my name up in lights. Leonard Nimoy does still have that restraining order out on me though.
Others thought it was cool, too. Wallace began winning contests -- local, state, national -- culminating in second place in the International Intel Science and Engineering Fair last May in Cleveland. He's now beginning work on a USU physics degree.
Wow, building a nuclear fusion reactor only gets you second place in Intel's science contest? What did the kid who got first place do, find a cure for cancer?
Well, thats a first. Has no-one heard of John Logie Baird?
My web domain.
so either "congratulations" or "fuck right off"
I just can't decide
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
"Hey Mike?"
"Yeah, Gabe?"
"We got a problem down on Earth. In Utah."
"I thought you fixed that last century!"
"No, no, not that. Someone's found a loophole in the physics program. They're getting energy out of nowhere."
"Blessit! Lemme check..." "Hey, I thought I fixed that! All right, let me find my terminal." "There, that ought to patch it."
(from Rec.Humor.Funny)
Damn straight - - that's why they're often called "Serendipity Labs." The junior biochemists are way less impressive than this guy.
It is considered to be in the West, and more specifically, the Mountain West. Never the Midwest.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I built a flux capacitor when I was in high school, attached it to my Ford Pinto, and went back to November 5th, 1955. It was there that I met my parents.
cbmeeks
Remember, licking doorknobs is illegal on other planets.
Craig built a neutron modulator (which slows down the emitted neutrons so they can be detected) out of a few hundred spare CDs.
I bet those were all AOL CDs, everyone has a few hundered of those lying around all the time.
welcome to college
Words this kid will never hear: "Baby, you make me hotter than a Poisser plasma reaction."
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
This guy makes reading equations and calculations a rational exercise and easy! He is the kind of guy we need in Physics, not those who have died and been reincarnated as god!
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
Is it just me, or was this a lucky find? I mean, even before 9/11, finding nuclear devices was pretty hard.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
...this kid builds a reactor, and M$ can't even build a reliable patch system for their OS'es. Well, for that matter, a reliable anything.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
...welcome our new nuclear fusion reactor-building freshman overlords!
Big deal, I have seen plans for this using all kinds of materials....
Now generate more energy then you put in!
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
ok if that won SECOND place, what project one the first place?
The only way to bust a doper--is when you yourself become a smoker!
So this kid builds this amazing thing and he wins second place in the International Intel Science and Engineering Fair last May in Cleveland.
What won first place, you might ask? According to Intel's page on it, there were in fact 3 winners. One developed a new method for determining the distance of asteroids from Earth, another developed a program that may one day enable a person with muscular disabilities to use brainwaves to control a computer keyboard, and the third set out to solve how to treat cancer patients effectively without destroying their healthy cells.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Looking at Farnsworth's plans for the first time, Craig and his father both had the same thought: Now there's a science project.
This kid didn't do this all on his own. His father helped and supported him. To me, the big message here is: "Hey parents, pay attention to your kids and encourage them to do hard things. They can and will." Work with and help your kids excel at something, anything. Don't expect the public school system and day care to turn your kids into geniuses.
There is a much longer rant wanting to be released, but I think you get the message.
- Jasen.
Martin: Behold, the power plant of the future, today!
Burns: Yuchh. Too cold and sterile. Where's the heart?
Martin: But it really generates power. It, it's lighting this room right now. [turns a knob, dimming the auditorium lights]
Burns: You lose -- get off my property.
From "Homer's Enemy" (the Frank Grimes episode)
~Philly
There's lots of stuff more radioactive than U235 and Pu239, there's Pu238 ( I could have the atomic wights wrong for Pu ) that they use to power space probes. It's much more radioactive than the stuff they use in bombs. U235 is less radioactive than Pu 239. The cesium they use to irradiate food is even more radioactive than the Pu they use in space probes. But you couldn't make a bomb with it. It is so radioactive that you couldn't hold a critical mass of it together long enough for it all to chain-react and blow up.
If you want a nuclear boom, you need something that chain-reacts at critical mass slowly enough to stay together and make an efficient boom. U235 is the easiest thing anyone has found to make explode nuclearly. Shoot a U235 bullet into a slightly subcritical U235 nugget and kaboom.
Pu239 is harder to detonate. You need to wrap it in precise explosives. An amateur would get caught testing the boom boom stuff, and would prollly mess it up anyway.
Pu239 is prolly easier to come by than U235, but harder to blow up. Uranium ore can be mined by the amateur in most states and is easy to separate into the unenriched metal. This is not even illegal.
An amateur could teach themselves how to make a lil' reactor out of unenriched uranium and get their Pu239. It would help them to know what they are doing to get it to produce the most Pu239. ( making reactors is illegal - don't do it )
But an amateur will prolly never get a Pu239 bomb to detonate. They'd just get an embarrasing fizzle.
Better for them to use U235. It takes over 100 lbs of unenriched uranium to make one pound of U235 ( enriching uranium is illegal - don't do it ). Back in the day, enrichment was more of a pain in the butt, but now, I believe it is within the reach of a determined amateur. Aside from gas diffusion, the famous method of enrichment of olde, ( zeolites might make this easier nowadays, I dunno ) there is a method using dye lasers to selectively ionize U235 and then seperate it using an electric field. The lazers you need are big and expensive and it takes expertise to use them though.
There is one technique that seems within the realm of possibility for a garage fudderer. Like the Xenon Ion Drives NASA uses, unenriched uranium could be ionized and fired directionally. ( maybe an el-cheapo lazer that is not selective would work for ionizing ). If they built a vaccuum chamber around it, and had a target for the uranium atoms and an electric field to steer the uranium atoms, the most easily steered uranium atoms would be the U235. Maybe they could make a cascade of such things out of some old television sets and let them run for a few years to get the enriched metal.
Then they could threaten to blow up an uninabited section of desert in which no endangered spiecies live, and the army would clear hikers etc from the dangerous area around the test site for them. They might call the newspapers too, so there is a big crowd around to watch. They wouldn't want to be the only one there, it would be suspicious. Plus the party atmosphere might be seen as a plus.
Even though it is in the realm of possibility and would be very cool to see, don't do it. It is illegal, and you will probably die from radiation poisoning if you mess with nucular stuff. Plus it would take up all your time and money leaving you living in a junkyard with no friends and family, and a lousy job that you just have to pay for 'supplies'. You would start to become lonely and bitter and a bit crazy. If you ever did get your bomb finished you'd have no honey to drink beer with at the detonation. You might decide to use it on a more populated area in jealous spite. I might live there. I don't want to get blown up. So don't try to make a bomb. You would be happier and healthier and less likely to be in jail pursuing other more mundane things.
Eat at Joe's.
I have a little experience in this matter, and what really impresses me are the kid's scrounging abilities. A neutron detector in a scrap yard? A turbo-molecular pump from the DI? (FYI, Deseret Industries is the Utah equivalent of the Salvation Army or Goodwill). How in the heck? Jeez, do you know how much money that would have saved when I built ~my~ deuteron collider? I thought I was doing good by scrounging HV supplies out of a junked ion implanter. BTW, the Deseret News got it wrong - the CD's are a neutron MODERATOR not MODULATOR. In my experience, Paraffin Wax is probably better than CD's, and is cheap, but maybe he had too many AOL cd's lying around.
Yes, I built a fusion reactor in college too. Seriously. It's on my resume. Of course, I was a junior by the time I got it built. I didn't want to go with the Farnsworth design though - everyone knows how it underperforms (although it ~could~ be improved). Mine was a beam collider, more similar to the works of Rostoker or Maglich. It produced a LOT more fusion - I had to limit my time near it while it was on, in order to keep my dose down to reasonable levels. Darwin Awards, I know. Seriously, I was careful, and received about a Rad or two in the years I worked on it (more from x-rays than neutrons). Lead is your friend, water and borax too. I wish my college professors had been as supportive as the ones at USU appear to be. They discouraged undergraduate research, thinking we didn't know enough to do anything real (of course, skipping class to go work on FUZZY didn't get on their good side).
Yes, Farnsworth fusors are old news. I still think they are cool - the primary reason big science moves so slow is that it is so big. I don't know why more colleges don't build ones and let their kids play around with them. They're cheap! Get enough people messing with them and maybe something will come of it.
Strangely enough, I grew up in Utah too. Must be something in the water...
What I want to know is, what the hell did the winner do? Build a cat starting with household chemicals?
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
"They found a neutron detector in an Idaho Falls scrap metal yard."
Amazing! Same place I found a bunch of rusty old plasma conduits and tritanium phase converters!
I just have to tell that poor old timetraveller who's stuck in our timezone to look up that metal yard for the parts he's missing for his Dimensional Warp Generator model Generation 3 52 4350A watch unit.
What do you make of the report by Farnsworth's wife, in her memoirs, about the fusor going self-sustaining? If it's true, it would really turn the fusion world on its head.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
ME092 Silencing Cancer With RNA
Anila Madiraju, 17, Marianopolis College, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
OK, OK, so it may not be a true reactor... but for jeebus sake what the hell did the first place winner make??? My freshman year was mostly occupied with beer and chicks, nuclear reactors came in a close third though.
www.GamezCore.com For Hardcore PS2 Gamerz : By Hardcore PS2 Gamerz
As Idarubicin pointed out, water and high voltage can make for fun sparks.
However, I wonder where he found the attenuation coefficients for "AOL CD's". Its not in my Nuclear Handbook. When I did this in college, I used paraffin wax, because 1) it was cheap 2) it was a decent moderator 3) it had known characteristics, so I could use the results from attenuation experiments to show that my neutrons were 2.45 Mev +/- 0.1 Mev. It's nice to know that the neutrons you are measuring are actually from D+D -> He3 + n.
MacGyver's been doing this for years.
Yes, I hear about these "Intel science award" winners.
It is just wonderful to hear about so many kids whose parents or teachers can hook them up with researchers at decent universities.
And then I think back to high school, at a college-prep public magnet school no less, where there were no opportunities to work with professors or professionals to do research.
I wanted to do research in physics, which I intended to major in. Ended up doing a project that was biological/sociological, because that was the only thing the teachers knew about, and no pleading resulted in any ideas about where to look for information or help on the physics project.
There was no support for a student to do an independent project in something outside of the teachers fields.
So yeah, I'm a little bitter when I hear about the winning science project built by little Johnny, whose 9th grade teacher set up a mentor relationship with Professor Nobel-Prize at the local Major Tier-1 Research University. Oh, those three and a half years of working together with the Professor and the grad students, carving out a research project to win the Intel science fair. It must have been so fun. If I hear another story about a kid with an engineer father getting to do two years of research with a professor at Cal Tech, I will throw up.
Essentially, these "Science Fairs" are the outlet for priviledged students doing university-level work with excellent advisors and mentors.
The same students in an environment (like mine) where the best support they are offered is "extra time in the library" will end up doing exactly what I did--finally giving in and doing a project that just makes the teacher happy and gets an "A". Why be creative when no one really cares.
I was just wondering - can this be considered similar to these "neutron detonators" used in fission weapons to increase the yield?
Farnsworth, like Tesla, died virtually penniless and unknown.
$665.95 -- retail price of the beast.
That was the suggested retail price. In reality, the prices at local discount stores are likely to be:
$665.87 -- K-Mart's price.
$665.84 -- Wal-Mart's price.
$699.99 -- Sears' price, but that also includes the extended warranty.
What did this guy make, and how can it be used?
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog!" - a dog
Slightly offtopic, but interesting. I had always wondered why drinking lots of D2O might be bad for you, but it's wasn't immediately obvious to me. As it turns out, one difference between D2O and H2O is in hydrogen bonding; an amino acid chain in a deuterated environment tends to fold into a different shape. You can imagine how that would start to raise havoc, depending on the concentrations involved.
Not sure if I agree with Snow. Most CEO's I hear about weren't in the liberal arts; they were business majors. And most politicians started out as lawyers. I don't see writers and artists with any more power than scientists and engineers, and would guess that, as a group, they have less.
I'd also dispute the common notion that tech-types have nothing to do with the 'softer' arts like literature and music.
Go to your local university and get the funding figures. Average the budgets, endowments, etc. etc. for Humanities and Social Sciences departments in one column and then the same for Sciences and Engineering departments in the other column. Chances are that one is definitely better funded, and it is not the Humanities/Social Sciences column that I'm speaking of.
Another way to check is to compare the stipends/scholarships/etc. given to graduate students in these respective divisions. Again you will typically find that the "hard sciences" are much better funded, much better respected, and even much better understood. Administration tends to favor the fusion project over the Durkhiem coloquium because they know what fusion is.
Note that this has little or no bearing on the public economy, which really favors business (including the business of entertainment) since business makes a point of connecting and communicating with the populace at large in the most user-friendly, attractive ways possible. You will never find a physicist who is as popular as a movie star simply because the physicist does not have a publicist, a career strategist, a hair guy, a make-up guy and a plastic surgeon. News agencies and talk shows do not go around looking under rocks for people to put on their shows, they rely on press releases and phone calls from publicists for the bulk of their stories and/or guests.
Any spare change the physicist encounters will usually go right back into his baby (a.k.a. current project), whatever that happens to be, rather than to making him famous and attractive.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I know it is off topic, but why waste time (and Mod Points) moding up Anonymous Cowards?
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
What does a fission breed reactor get you in a scavenger hunt? Not much more than 3 points. I think girl's panties are worth 10, and they are quicker to get (well for some).
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
The mormons have the bomb! Utah is doomed!
Oh well, a world with legal polygyny in it won't be so bad, right?
The real fallacy in all this is the all-too common belief that science and technology (or art, or society, or anything else for that matter) moves forward in single, discrete steps.
Sure, sometimes a Newton or an Einstein, Darwin or a Lavosier comes along and does a bit more pushing forward than most others.
But most of the time, things proceed very gradually.. and it is therefore very common that many people get about the same idea at the same time.
In theses cases it's impossible to attribute the entire phenomenon to one single person, and will always be a fallacy to attempt to do so.
But that's not really a reason to make it unavailable.. a lot of things will do a lot more damage to you a lot faster, and you can buy them at 7-11.....
Your comment has been designated un-American and in violation of the Patriot Act, as well as several pieces of future legislation. As you wait next to your terminal for re-education, please burn the books that contain these blatant lies.
Was this perchance a *copy* of an existing reactor . . . ? These college kids with their reactor-swapping has got to stop! -- "I'm sure, in the miserable annals of the Earth, you will be duly inscribed."
[In a shooting range, confronted with numerous menacing-looking targets, Edwards shoots a cardboard little girl.]
Zed: May I ask why you felt little Tiffany deserved to die?
James Edwards: Well, she was the only one that actually seemed dangerous at the time, sir.
Zed: How'd you come to that conclusion?
James Edwards: Well, first I was gonna pop this guy hanging from the street light, and I realized, y'know, he's just working out. I mean, how would I feel if somebody come runnin' in the gym and bust me in my ass while I'm on the treadmill? Then I saw this snarling beast guy, and I noticed he had a tissue in his hand, and I'm realizing, y'know, he's not snarling, he's sneezing! Y'know, ain't no real threat there. Then I saw little Tiffany. I'm thinking, y'know, eight-year-old white girl, middle of the ghetto, bunch of monsters, this time of night with quantum physics books? She about to start some shit, Zed. She's about eight years old, those books are WAY too advanced for her. If you ask me, I'd say she's up to something. And to be honest, I'd appreciate it if you eased up off my back about it. Or do I owe her an apology?
http://imdb.com/title/tt0119654/quotes
Wow, he changed a tire while in grade school!! Kid must be some kind of genius!
Anyone suspicious that his only other accomplishment was changing a tire? Maybe I'm a pessimist, but it just seems strange he's never won any science fairs anywhere (or even placed), then suddenly builds a fusion reactor? "Craig and his father..." have to wonder how much work his dad put into this project.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
The first remote I remember was a pneumatic one that had a fish tank type of hose attached to it. It was not wireless by any means. You had to give it a hearty squeeze and it would advance only one channel at a time, of course.
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Baird got the idea about alternating scan lines. This was the real advance although it needed the axle to connect source and destination. ;-)
Sending the scan lines electronically was derivitave. Boooo! Hisssss!
Mommy, does that make me a troll?
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
And non-Americans are experts at everything Americans suck at I guess.
One of the parts was in a SCRAP YARD, NOT A DUMP! People go to scrap yards to BUY things that no longer serve their primary purpose but can still be used in some lesser or other capacity.
The other hadn't even made it to the scrap yard it was still in the building! Yeah, that's the same thing as having already thrown it out...
Or is it just fasionable to bash Americans the way it is fasionable to bash Microsoft?
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
this makes no sense. I don't understand this Intarweb thing. AAAA!
Standing at the very edge of my imagination, I peered into the inky void and realised -- I couldn't think up a new sig.
I think it's better if we just fnord everything about this...
I am American too, but I live in Sweden. So I'm allowed to bash them when they do stupid things like being extremely wasteful.
If the reward is a year in the future, it should be set at about (5*(1+1.5%)) = USD 5.075. That is called "time value of money" - i.e. USD 5 to be received a year in the future is not as valuable as USD 5 in your pocket here and now. The difference is what your USD 5 would grow to, given the current (admittedly pathetic) level of interest rates. Hate to see a fellow Slashdotter cheated...
Deuteron colliders use the following two reactions:
/. is a physics geek?), T= triton (thats a deuteron with an extra neutron, or a hydrogen with 2 extra neutrons) p= proton (a hydrogen nucleus) n = neutron, and He3 is Helium-3, like a regular Helium nucleus minus a neutron. You might notice that the particles recieve energy in inverse proportion to their mass. This is usually the case in nuclear kinematics.
D+D -> T( +1.0 MeV) + p (+3.0 MeV)
OR
D+D -> He3 (+0.82 MeV) + n (+2.45 MeV)
These reactions occur with approximately equal probability. The neutron reaction is usually the easy one to detect, and can be used to find your fusion rate. If the kid's fusor had been generating a higher neutron flux, they could have used a thicker moderator as an attenuator to find out what the neutron energy was, in order to verify that the neutrons were actually from deuterium fusion.
Oh, btw for the non-physicists out there (what, not everyone on
The reaction is definitely not the p-p chain. The reaction cross section for p-p is much, much smaller than D-D. The difference between D-D and p-p is as great as the difference between your gasoline engine and D-D.
Copiewrite infrinjmint is gud enturtaynmint!
DUKEY!
The only fusion I was worried about in high school involved a blonde with C cups.
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