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WY Teen Cut From Science Fair For Entering Too Many
An anonymous reader writes " A Wyoming high school student who built a nuclear reactor in his dad's garage was disqualified from the International Science and Engineering Fair this month on a technicality.' His crime: competing in too many science fairs."
Almost anything is a nuclear reactor if you play with the definition. There are isotopes decaying in my thumb right now. It's a nuclear reactor. I seriously doubt these things are producing net energy beyond curiosity wattage. You can probably do some interesting betavoltaic stuff that would generate power at the cost of $50/milliwatt. If you tried to scale it up and generate any significant power, the Feds would eventually find you... probably. I've often wondered if anybody has set one up for "off grid" power. I think there's a 50-50 chance that one back-woods dude is powering his cabin on a huge parcel of land somwhere where it woudln't attract attention. Dangerous as all get-out though. It's so much easier just to use wood stoves, solar panels, etc.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Farnsworth Fusors are fusion reactors that aren't net energy positive. They're just fascinating.
The kids who build fission reactors aren't building them on a large enough scale to risk harm to anyone but themselves. By way of analogy, anyone can make a model rocket engine out of firecrackers, at the risk of blowing their fingers off. Making a solid rocket engine that can boost something into orbit an entirely different story.
That has nothing to do with this story at all. He entered different lower-level competitions with the same entry in order to maximize his odds of making it to the next level. The problem with allowing this would be that to even the odds, everybody would have to enter every competition, where the same set of projects would be re-evaluated over and over.
The Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor is decades old, relatively easy to build (I know someone who built one in his garage), available commercially (as a neutron source) and is generally considered to be not a candidate for fusion power.
Given that the name of the student is Conrad Farnsworth, I have to wonder if there is a family connection, but the article does not go into that.
disqualifying someone just because they failed to win too many times is low
That's not why he was disqualified. He was disqualified because he failed to advance to the next level and then jumped over the state border to try again with the same project in another state. Without this rule, you could have kids entering a dozen different state competitions with the same project, just hoping to get the right set of judges to advance you.
“The South Dakota fair is close and gives our kids another opportunity to present their work,” Scribner said. “I think that was some of our motivation, and it did give our kids another chance to qualify.”
The school absolutely used multiple fairs to get extra chances to qualify - they outright say so. And that's exactly why the rule's in place.
They put the rule in place to stop people failing at one using other fairs as a chance to succeed at another. He failed at one then used another to succeed. The school uses the second fair for exactly that purpose. And then they're shocked when they discover there was a rule to prevent the loophole they thought they'd discovered. That's not an unintended consequence. That's the intended consequence.
It does not take talent to waste power.
It takes talent to build a fusor from scratch.
It takes talent to build scintillators, or even use existing one, to get a spectrum from your reaction to know the exact reactions that are occurring and in what proportions.
It takes talent to keep yourself safe using such a device.
It take drive and motivation and a damn side more vision than most people have to attempt such endeavors. This is the Hello World for a nuclear physicist and I encourage such behavior.
If all you can see is someone "wasting" electricity I think you've missed out on a much larger picture.
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