Freshman builds fusion reactor

September 17, 2003 11:17 AM

Top this, MacGyver A college freshman and inveterate tinkerer followed Philo Farnsworth's designs to build a workable fusion reactor out of junk. via Macintouch
posted by adamrice (26 comments total)

Well, we just spent $13 million on tech at our school and most of our kids wouldn't be able to tell you what half the stuff in that article meant. Hats off to the Utah educational system...
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:28 AM on September 17, 2003

...culminating in second place in the International Intel Science and Engineering Fair last May in Cleveland

My perpetual motion machine won.
posted by jalexei at 11:41 AM on September 17, 2003

jalexei - Ahh, I wondered what could have topped the fusion reactor. Nice work.
posted by drobot at 11:48 AM on September 17, 2003

Meh--it's ok.
posted by Cool Alex at 12:00 PM on September 17, 2003

The winners
posted by starvingartist at 12:06 PM on September 17, 2003

Link to Slashdot discussion.
posted by split atom at 12:07 PM on September 17, 2003

The winners: you know, the usual, reading people's minds and curing cancer, not much. No wonder my stupid anti-gravity machine only got an honorable mention.
posted by Pollomacho at 12:08 PM on September 17, 2003

untrustworthy professors better watch out or else their house will be full of popcorn...
posted by armacy at 12:09 PM on September 17, 2003

Excellent Real Genius reference, Armacy.
posted by adamrice at 12:11 PM on September 17, 2003

A few of my friends in Engineering Physics at Queen's University made an X-Ray laser, using 6 24's of empty beer bottles for the power supply... it's based on what's known as a corona effect, so the original plan was to use only Corona beer. It ended up being too expensive, so they switched to Canadian. Still, the total cost was ~$200, vs $200,000 that the 3 other X-Ray lasers in the world cost to make.

IIRC, it discharged a 3-foot arc of 800,000 volts at 4,000 amps. Fried all the digital clocks in the physics building, and threw my buddy across the room when he leaned against it as it discharged!

They used to have a website for it, but they took it down when they graduated :^(
posted by krunk at 12:14 PM on September 17, 2003

It doesn't take a whole lot of money when you don't obsess about safety, maximum output, red tape and endless bureaucracy.

/Just sayin'
posted by DBAPaul at 12:38 PM on September 17, 2003

: <-- the colon. what does it look like?
posted by paladin at 1:13 PM on September 17, 2003

The article hints at the involvement of Craig's father, and I'd be interested to know how much of the project was actually Craig's work and how much was his father's. Plasma physics is something that takes an advanced knowledge of science and calculus to work with, and as a sophomore (Craig's grade level when he began his fusion odyssey) in high school most people haven't even been introduced to either. I've leafed through a plasma physics textbook that belonged to a friend of mine (a senior in nuclear engineering, and intern at the NASA advanced space propulsion laboratory) and if anyone that young could begin to comprehend what's going on with that plasma, I'm very, very impressed.
posted by StrangerInAStrainedLand at 1:22 PM on September 17, 2003

This reminds me David Hahn, the teenager who built a breeder reactor in his backyard toolshed for a Boy Scout merit badge. Ken Silverstein wrote a wonderful article on him in a 1998 issue of Harper's Magazine. There's an archive here.
posted by jbrjake at 1:32 PM on September 17, 2003

Could he possibly be related to this man?
posted by ilsa at 2:14 PM on September 17, 2003

Stranger: You don't have to know much about plasma physics to build one of those. Just like you don't have to know much about the details of combustion to build, say, a potato gun.

The two main principles needed to understand how this works are:

1) Ions accelerate in an electric field.
2) Particles (such as ions) that hit each other at high speed (such as produced by accelerating in an electric field) do interesting things (like nuclear fusion).

More info at the Wikipedia.

The plasma created by the device just kind of does its own thing, and you don't have to know exactly what it's doing to make it do that, especially when you're just using someone else's design. (That's not to say making it was easy, but just that I doubt Craig knew much about plasma physics when he did.)

ilsa: Well, yes.
posted by whatnotever at 2:19 PM on September 17, 2003

...if anyone that young could begin to comprehend what's going on with that plasma, I'm very, very impressed.

Don't be too impressed. I picked up a Ph.D in plasma physics at 19. Today I couldn't figure out how to work an ice dispenser at a restaurant. (Not to belittle his accomplishments, though -- some of the stuff he did was pretty ingenious. OTOH, he pretty much duplicated someone else's design, so he didn't have to know a lot of plasma physics.) On preview, what whatnotever said.

Krunk: My school had two student-built X-ray lasers, so I think there's more than 3 in the world. Maybe there's only a few with the power you describe.
posted by joaquim at 2:26 PM on September 17, 2003

pretty cool. too bad he didn't get the holy grail, maybe next time!
posted by shadow45 at 3:37 PM on September 17, 2003

Um. Isn't that a dangerous thing to have in the garage? This sounds both detrimental to Craig's future reproductive health and foreboding as to the ready availability of radioactive materials:

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.

posted by hairyeyeball at 3:50 PM on September 17, 2003

he could always settle for a career in making personal transportation devices *cough*
posted by shadow45 at 4:12 PM on September 17, 2003

Joaquim: I wouldn't at all be surprised if my friends overstated the significance of their project ;^)
All I know is that it was pretty funny when it discharged and the ensuing EMP fried another group's project (in the next room) to the point that they were exempted from their honour's thesis.
posted by krunk at 4:42 PM on September 17, 2003

hairyeyeball:

Wallace's detector measures 36 neutrons per minute just in background radiation from space, and the device's usual output adds only four neutrons per minute. People in airplanes absorb much more than that.
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 5:03 PM on September 17, 2003

krunk: We once misaligned a mirror on one of our lasers, bored a hole in the ceiling and set fire to the desk of a physics prof in the office upstairs. Our teacher leaned over a CO2 laser and burned his tie in half -- twice. Lasers are fun.
posted by joaquim at 5:07 PM on September 17, 2003

hairyeyeball, deuterium oxide (heavy water) is not radioactive. Perhaps you're thinking of tritium, which is radioactive. (Tritium is often used in emergency exit signs since it glows visibly and has a convenient 12-year half life.)
posted by hattifattener at 8:11 PM on September 17, 2003

This reminds me David Hahn, the teenager who built a breeder reactor in his backyard/.../wonderful article on him in a 1998 issue of Harper's Magazine. There's an archive here.

Did anyone else read this article? It's fascinating.
posted by a_green_man at 8:53 PM on September 17, 2003

Point of order, slightly off topic. The article cites Farnsworth of the inventor of television. I plead John Logie Baird.
posted by nthdegx at 6:11 PM on September 18, 2003