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Build Your Own Cyclotron
mindpixel writes "Physics Today is running a story about Tim Koeth's 12 inch cyclotron. Here's a quote that says it all: 'I was sitting in Tom Devlin's modern physics lecture. He described the principle of the cyclotron. He said it required a lot of RF power. I was--and am--a ham radio operator, so RF was no problem. It needed a big magnet; I knew I could find one of those. How tough could a vacuum system and chamber be?'"
I've seen Battlestar Galactica. First you build one, then it tries to kill you!
I see "12 inch" and "vacuum" in the same story.
/. posting spam now?
Is
I fucking hate ugly magnets because I still find them almost as attractive as the cute ones.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I too was a mild-mannered scientist, until I was hit with an accidental dose of Gamma Rays and turned in The Incredible Hulk ... so Tim should be careful.
n. A circular particle accelerator in which charged subatomic particles generated at a central source are accelerated spirally outward in a plane perpendicular to a fixed magnetic field by an alternating electric field. A cyclotron is capable of generating particle energies between a few million and several tens of millions of electron volts.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
Already done.
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
I made a cloud chamber in junior high (and I graduated from high school in 1972, so do the math.)
A little dry ice, some alcohol, black paper, a strong light, a petri dish (I think it was), and a bit of the stuff from the hand of a watch.
It actually worked; I could see an occasional trail of condensation, but the thrill was not that it worked but that I built it. I would not have been thrilled one bit less if it hadn't of worked at all.
Scientific American used to run article on how to build things for physics. Seems like prior to persuing chemistry and electrical engineering my brothers and I built Van Der Graff generators, cloud chambers, and lots more from those pages. They had an old design for a particle accelerator as well. It was NOWHERE near this.
Fascibnating to read an article like this
I'm going to make the king out of a linear accelerator. For the pawns I'll use my run-of-the-mill 5 keV cyclotrons.
A friend of mine in the physics program at Rutgers built the can crusher demo they have. It discharges a huge HV paper-oil capacitor through a coil of copper tubing about six or seven turns long, wrapped around a plexiglass tube. You put the can in the tube, close the switch, and POW the can is instantly crushed into a hot crumpled aluminum stick the width of your thumb because the field sets up a countercurrent in the can which repels the main coils. Even my girlfriend was impressed. We used to discharge the capacitor bank across thin wire-wrap wire, which vaporizes pretty well. He's working at some military contractor nowadays, working on ultrapowerful lasers. Which probably suits him better than the fiber optic sissy lasers he was working on before the telecom crash.
Another thing you should know if you take physics at Rutgers is that the physics auditorium is probably exposing you to mercury vapor. Legend has it that they did a "mercury hammer" demo one time with liquid nitrogen, where you pour the mercury in and freeze it, then pull it out and pound nails with it. Someone got the bright idea of passing the hammer around the room, and during its trip through the audience it started to drip. Only some of it made it back to the front of the room.
Why worry? Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back.
</Venkman>
Just seemed appropriate...
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This goes to show you that you don't need megabucks to do good science! To many, half of science is the challenge, not the successes, but they are nice, of course [grin].
I don't see why this mind-set couldn't be used for teaching science and computers on the high school level....Find a company that is getting rid of their dozens of old Pentium II system, get them to donate them to the highschool, and build a Beowulf or OpenMosix cluster to allow HS students to learn the fundamentals of supercomputing environments. Get a local university to help teach them...and you now have a chance of producing better educated computer geeks...and the physics & chemistry geeks and run small simulations as well.
Just an idea...
ttyl
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
Miles Monroe: Perform sex? Uh, uh, I don't think I'm up to a performance, but I'll rehearse with you, if you like.
Luna Schlosser: Okay. I just thought you might want to; they have a machine here.
Miles Monroe: Machine? I'm not getting into that thing. I, I'm strictly a hand operator; you know, I, I... I don't like anything with moving parts that are not my own.
Folks,
Go out and get yourself a copy of "The Amateur Scientist" collection on CD.
For those of you who are too young to remember the column, or before it was dumbed down, Scientific American had a column called "The Amateur Scientist" - they had plans for a cyclotron, a SERIOUSLY high power CO2 laser and LOTS of other things that could get you hurt in a real hurry. And they showed REAL experiments, and REAL science in that column.
Of course, that was before SciAmerican got dumbed down, became half ads, and became PC - you could actually find desenting views in REAL papers
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,510054502,00 .html
It never seemed to me like it was actually fusion, but hey, whatever...
No man's an island, unless he's had too much to drink and wets the bed.
...when most cyclotrons are only around 5.5 inches.
As a grad student in physics i've aided my professor in the construction of a VSM (vibrating sample magnetometer, 5T sweep field) and a low-temperature MOKE (magneto-optical Kerr effect) system which is housed in a vacuum chamber. I've had absolutely no fun dealing with hivac systems. So many parameters; such as the oil on your body, hair, microscopic defects in gaskets, and miniscule amounts of dust can really play a role on the vacuum that can be achieved. Then comes the fun of finding the leaks...ahhh! All in all, it was a good experience, though. So go build something. Take it easy.
The pole diameter is only 12 inches but the yoke and coils are included in that figure. Total weight is 4600 lbs for the magnet assembly - each coil is 800 lbs and the iron yoke and pole assembly is 3000 lbs.
http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/cyclotron/12inchmag .shtml
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.