The Farnsworth Fusor & ITT's corporate control.

BILL_THA_PHARMACIZT · Heavy Crude Joined: Aug 17, 2004 Posts: 126

Thought this might make for a good read.

http://www.farnovision.com/chronicles/fusion/vassilatos.html

Devil · Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2004 1:24 am Post subject:

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Devil

DoctorDoom · Posted: Sat Aug 21, 2004 2:12 pm Post subject: Mr. Fusion

It did indeed, thanks for posting it. Skeptics, don't laugh, you really can get fusion to occur using vacuum tube technology. In fact there was an article about this in a science magazine just a few years ago, with plans sufficiently detailed that someone could (and, I believe, did) build a device as a science fair project. The device is about the size of Mr. Fusion from "Back to the Future" - it looks like a coffee-maker-sized tube of thick glass with a wire mesh ball mounted on a pedastal in the center, and some other wires inside it. My vague recollection is that the electric field starts deuterium ions moving in a path that goes straight into the center of the device and back out the other side (because the "ball" attracting them is made of a mesh, so most of them don't hit anything). They go back and forth like this from all sides, in a roughly spherical pattern, the idea being that the odds of a sufficiently energetic collision are higher in the center than they'd be if the ions moved around at random.

There's a catch, of course - very little fusion actually occurs. Only very high-energy ions colliding virtually head-on will fuse. So little fusion occurs that there's no radiation danger at all, and in fact you'd need very sensitive instruments to even measure that things are working. A lot more energy goes into the device than you could possibly extract. I have the magazine, I just wish I could find an on-line reference to it. It's way cool to think you can build a fusion reactor at home, even if it's not a practical energy source!