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High Schoolers Use Homemade Nuclear Fusion Reactor To Dominate Science Fairs (us.com)
An anonymous reader writes: 20 high school students gather every Friday night in a basement of a modest home in Federal Way, Washington to work on science experiments using a home-made nuclear fusion reactor. [They've also reportedly won top honors in science fairs as well as college scholarships.] This extreme science club is the brainchild of Carl Greninger, a Program Manager at Microsoft by day, scientist by night. He was concerned about the current state of high school science education, [and] lamented that the public school system does not truly expose students to the excitement of experimental discovery.
So using his own money (and one-ton of radiation shielding), Greninger "gathered some students and built a working nuclear fusion reactor in his garage."
So using his own money (and one-ton of radiation shielding), Greninger "gathered some students and built a working nuclear fusion reactor in his garage."
I dug around on the website and found this document which seems to indicate that yes, we're talking about a Farnsworth Fusor.
It probably is fusion, just not net-positive. In other words, a collider.
When you use students for your pet project and they go on to win every science fair, isn't that more discouraging for the competitors who don't get free money behind the scenes? Or is it naive to think that any participant in a high school science fair is autonomous enough to produce interesting projects on their own?
Doesn't sit well by me to see them snag a bunch of scholarships and apparently crowdfund their project (according to their website) with all that money and expertise doing (presumably) most of the work for them.
You come to slashdot and ask "Why behind a bookcase"? What is wrong with slashdot?
You, dear sir, hand in your geekcard at once.
Why? Because it is a freaking cool to have a fusion reactor in your garage in a secret lab behind a bookshelf! I cannot imagine someone on this website even has to ask that.
This is exactly what the radioactive boyscout did, but he got arrested and his work confiscated. Yet this guy gets to keep his? Maybe I should build a reactor.
This is exactly what's wrong with science education in America.
The radioactive boy scout did fission, while these high school students are doing fusion.
Buy a dictionary, there's a difference.
I couldn't find any definite information, but this is probably a Farnsworth Fusor, which is every bit a valid and interesting science project for high schoolers. (It's about the right size and gives off about the right glow.)
No it is not the same, the radioactive boy-scout produced a significant amount of radio nucleotides in a self sustaining fission reaction, all these fusion fan boys do is blast some heavy hydrogen and knock off it's neutron. As far as I know they have never managed to activate any other element to create an isotope that was unstable and considered dangerous, as the radioactive boy-scout did. If they did they would be shut down and with good reason as it is one pathway to a dirty bomb.