Science/Engineering/Technical forums

Thank you both for your replies!

One correction - I do not underestimate the complexity of the physics of the fusor. However, If the recipe is followed I can build a neutron producing fusor, maybe even a LDX demonstration type device but the space shuttle, tokamak and current incarnations of car engines would be a stretch (although if I quit my day job and got a grant...hmmm)

From Chris, "You can tell the old-timers. But you can't tell 'em much!"

You must know my Dad. That was great. Also, do you have a patent number that I may peruse or a link to the best description of your work. I have read pieces and parts of it in the other forum and a little discussion here but I would like to understand it better.

And Doug, I put in a quarter and got a 1.50 back (or more - I don't know your rate) One question about the forum-

Is there a way to subscribe to everything instead of each forum and subforum? The traffic rate is low enough for now that I would like to stay abreast of updates.

Charles

The way I do it is to look at "unread posts" since I've been keeping up all along. You have to be logged in to do that. Also, new things are red. So if you click on every red "last post" (it's the little icon of a sheet of paper), you'll quickly get everything normal color and new things will be red again. There's a little line of text links above the subforums you can investigate.

You should be able to build a fusor and get neutrons fairly easily, it's a very simple device that is "convergent" -- like a plane that flies flat/level when you take your hands off the stick, the one exception being how hard it is to control the current, which is divergent with gas pressure. We are running on the very steep left hand side of Paschen's law. So if gas pressure goes up a little, more ionization takes place, and it draws more current, which causes yet more ionization to occur, which draws yet more current. Going the other way, the fusor just goes out - not enough likely hood of creating enough new ions to keep it going as the mean free path goes up. Otherwise, the thing is pretty simple to make go. One thing many miss, is that if there's not enough ballast impedance, or too much capacity to ground at the grid (which can be just the parastics of the wiring) you can get huge peak currents and make a kind of expensive arc welder -- even an amp peak will blow bits of metal off the electrode, and that gas of ions is a very good short circuit...

I stock quartz, pyrex, lead glass, soda-lime. It's very easy to see what you have. Shine a very white light on it (I use either a quartz halogen desk lamp or sunshine). Quartz conducts light substantially better than the others, and the glow is water white -- the others are slightly green or yellow. You should try that on your dome -- if it's really quartz, you could sell it for the price of all the other stuff needed to make a top rate fusor! Including a new tank!

For those noticing we've had a ton of guests since Sunday -- what happened is someone found Thomas Rapp's little microscope project here and linked it from hackaday. We picked up some new members around that as well, though none have yet posted.