5 ms·

Speaking of CERN at home, the Fusor Forum [0] is a good place to visit. It's a community for fusor experimenters - a fusor is basically a glow discharge tube, b

Speaking of CERN at home, the Fusor Forum [0] is a good place to visit. It's a community for fusor experimenters - a fusor is basically a glow discharge tube, but capable of achieving nuclear fusion. It's not an easy project, but has been extensively documented, and it's potentially doable by anyone with dedication. A class of more difficult projects is particle accelerators. Many people built fusors, but fewer people had built electrostatic and linear accelerators. In addition to technical difficulties, X-ray hazards from an accelerator is much greater than a fusor. Cyclotrons are the hardest, a successful build is extremely rare. Experimenters reported that there were still considerable difficulties even with access to a college lab. In 2010, there was a "Small Cyclotron Conference" [1] - a meetup event for experimenters to share experience. It featured many fascinating presentations, make sure to see [2][3][4]. [0] https://fusor.net/board/ https://fusor.net/board/ [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110725214245/http://cyclotronconference.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20110725214245/http://cyclotronc... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110725214959/http://cyclotronconference.org/presentations/2010cycconf_YULY_houghton.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20110725214959/http://cyclotronc... [3] https://web.archive.org/web/20110725214353/http://cyclotronconference.org/presentations/2010cycconf_cyckids.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20110725214353/http://cyclotronc... [4] https://web.archive.org/web/20110725220048/http://cyclotronconference.org/presentations/cyclotron_apr_23_2010_houghton_3.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20110725220048/http://cyclotronc...

01100011 6y ago
Fusors make neutrons and can cause activation of nearby materials which can lead to all sorts of decay chains and radioactive products. Particle accelerators are cool though, despite the obvious danger. If you're dealing with just electrons, IIRC you need to get to about 6MeV to overcome the nuclear binding forces and initiate a decay. You can make a hell of a lot of X-rays below that of course, but personally one of my life's goals is to cause an atom to split :) No time for that now, but that's what retirement is for. As a bonus, radiation is a lot less damaging when you're past 50, so unless you get high enough to induce acute radiation poisoning you'll probably be fine. You can actually make a fairly low-tech accelerator with just a large Van De Graaff generator. There are even designs which replace the belt with a chain(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelletron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelletron) and reach fairly high energies(for a home unit anyway).

01100011 6y ago

Fusors make neutrons and can cause activation of nearby materials which can lead to all sorts of decay chains and radioactive products. Particle accelerators are cool though, despite the obvious danger. If you're dealing with just electrons, IIRC you need to get to about 6MeV to overcome the nuclear binding forces and initiate a decay. You can make a hell of a lot of X-rays below that of course, but personally one of my life's goals is to cause an atom to split :) No time for that now, but that's what retirement is for. As a bonus, radiation is a lot less damaging when you're past 50, so unless you get high enough to induce acute radiation poisoning you'll probably be fine. You can actually make a fairly low-tech accelerator with just a large Van De Graaff generator. There are even designs which replace the belt with a chain(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelletron https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelletron) and reach fairly high energies(for a home unit anyway).