Slashdot Mirror
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 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
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.
They also had instructions there on building linear accelerators based on Van der Graaf generators. That wasn't good enough for me, though -- I wanted a circular accelerator, like they had at CERN. (Somewhere, between old report cards and essays on democracy, is a reply from Carlo Rubbia, head of CERN at the time, to a fan letter I wrote him.)
I got as far as convincing the local welder that he should join some copper pipe in a circle for me for free. I'm great on ideas, but follow-through...Kudos to these guys for doing it. That's just cool beyond belief.
Carousel is a lie!
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...
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
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
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.
pfft, this guy built a cyclotron IN HIGH SCHOOL by himself and used it to demonstrate "particle mass resonace" he won the ISEF (used to be westinghouse) with it. Oh and he also was a consultant on accelerator technology for the show "stephen hawkings universe" shown on bbc and pbs. Not cool enough for you. Well he also built a breeder reactor to win a scavenger hunt.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"