Another Starting Question

[chronothread]

Hello,

I have already posted one message in the "Please Introduce Yourself" forum, but it was a while ago and I'm not sure where else this should go. First off, let me re-introduce myself. My name is Greg Olmschenk. I am currently an undergraduate physics student at the University of Minnesota. During the up coming spring semester I will be taking an upper level course in which we have to build a project of our choice. At the moment I'm considering a fusor. It looks like I'll be able to borrow vacuum and high voltage equipment from the physics department, so it looks like it might be fairly inexpensive. However, I was just reading "The World's Simplest Fusor" and I almost felt like with the way he was continually saying "this would be a good high school project" that a simple fusor might be too low level for my class. I was wondering if there was anything I could do to make a "better" fusor then the simple fusor that would make it more difficult or complicated in some way. Although I would prefer not to make one that's worse just so that it will be more difficult. (i.e. a historical one that works less efficiently) Then again, I don't want to make it too difficult. We'll have approximately 10 weeks to build the project keeping in mind that I'll have other classes at the same time and possibly a job. One possible complication I was considering would be fusing heavier elements then hydrogen. I still haven't studied the subject extensively so I don't know how difficult this would be. In any case, suggestions are always appreciated. Thanks for your help and sorry for the long post.

-Greg Olmschenk

[Steven Sesselmann]

Greg,

Welcome to the group.., building the simplest kind of fusor in ten weeks would be a huge challenge and I don't think that you need to go for anything more complicated to start with.

There are so many sciences that you need to learn about.

Vacuum technology, electronic engineering, high voltage engineering, material engineering, radiation and neutron detection etc.., plus of course understanding the nuclear process.

It's simply a matter of how far you want to take it.

Have fun, and impress your teacher...

Steven

[Chris Bradley]

Olmschenk wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I was wondering if there was anything I could do to ...that would make it more difficult or complicated in some way....One possible complication I was considering would be fusing heavier elements then hydrogen....We'll have approximately 10 weeks.

As you say, you have not yet studied the subject so you have little knowledge of how wonderfully naive is this question. (It has cheered me up this morning!) Do not get me wrong - it is a perfectly appropriate question to ask and you are clearly genuine in your intentions and with your question, but the reality is that our modern culture provides us all with such advanced technology with so apparent an ease of effort that it persuades many that we know just about all there is to know and these things are common place. That which there is yet to know is just a few little modifications on stuff we know full well about.

In your academic career, you will be bombarded by bombastic lecturers and scientists who will seek to persuade you how much is known already and they may end up insidiously persuading you that, indeed, there is little point questioning things as you are very unlikely to come up with anything new because so many people have already looked at the same problem.

Nothing could be further from the truth! The fusor is a gas-discharge device and even though these things have been around for almost as long as man-made electricity itself, we still know only the most fleeting details of how these things fundamentally work.

Countless PhD theses have been written, and without any doubt countless more will follow them, on the most simple elements and processes of the gas discharge process.

Do not seek to presume the best science is the most dramatic result. I would say that the best science comes from attempting to fully comprehend. If you build yourself a demo -fusor (just making a plasma) and you experiment with it and set your time down a path to learn how a spherical plasma REALLY forms and behaves, with accurate instrumentation and both practical and theoretical examinations, then you will still be at this task to your last days.

You can bounce along the top of investigation seeking the amazing and the fantastic, dramatic demonstrations – and you might even find some. But this is not science. Science is coming to know why these experiments work in the way that they do. I recommend you focus no more than half your time on building a discharge device and use the remainder to try to really understand how it works, if you are serious about science. You may end up having built no more than a ‘science project’, but if you pursue good scientific procedure you might actually find something out that is new and fundamental about this simple device – don’t let anyone tell you that you won’t!

Back to fusing Z>1: Much puffery has been devoted to the fusion of hydrogen with boron, both on this forum and in many other arenas. As far as I am aware, no one in human history has ever demonstrably and measurably achieved this other than a few oddments of atoms in high powered beam-collision type experiments. Now know that the easiest non-hydrogen fusion to do is 3He+3He [Z=2x2] but this is 100 times less likely than p+11B and needs a slightly higher temperature/collision energy as well. Dig into the subject and you will come to understand this, and why it is a) essentially impossible with magnetically confined thermonuclear plasmas and b) virtually inconceivable with electrostatic confinement. Fusion is a fascinating subject and I commend it to you, and wish you well for building a fusor. It is no minor project, it is as serious and as difficult a scientific task as you choose to make it.

best regards,

Chris MB.

[Nanos]

Whilst no expert on the subject, and still in the very early stages of building my own, I'd say that 10 weeks even if you worked every hour of the day you was awake, probably wouldn't be enough time to complete the task on your own.

If you had active help, plenty of equipment (Unless you have a spare $2,000 sitting aorund in your back pocket say..) on hand and didn't have the distraction of a job and other study, then you might make it in time.

To make it more complicated, I'd probably suggest to do as many of the building aspects yourself as you can, eg. instead of buying a gizmo to do this or that, build one from basic components.. (Eg. buy a diffusion pump or build one..)

I suppose one of the useful lessons you might come away with is a better ability to figure out how long a project is going to take. (Some might say a goldern rule is even if you can, times it by 3 to get the actual time )

I've been working on and off on mine for a year, and expect at least another year. (It would be interesting to hear peoples man hour totals in achieving their fusion.)

[chronothread]

Steven,

Thanks for the quick reply. I was thinking it would probably be plenty by itself, but just the way the paper was suggesting it as a high school project and what not made me start questioning how difficult it actually was. If I could get your opinion, how long would you expect it would take to build a fusor? Given that I would have a dedicated partner and many of the materials, including the vacuum equipment, easily accessible.

Thanks for your time,
-Greg

[chronothread]

Chris MB,

First off, thank you for the quick reply. I'm glad to hear I was not wrong in my original thinking that this would be a very challenging project. The only thing that made me think otherwise was the way it was continually being described as a high school project in "The World's Simplest Fusor" paper. And I agree with you about how little we know. Throughout my academic career so far each passing class has shown me more and more that for ever question we answer the results lead to five new unanswered questions. That for each thing we learn we realize how much less we know. Anywho, as for the fusor I'll ask you, if you don't mind, the same question I just asked Steven: How long would you expect it would take to build a fusor? Given that I would have a dedicated partner and many of the materials, including the vacuum equipment, easily accessible.

Thanks for your time,
-Greg

[chronothread]

Nanos,

Thanks for the quick reply. From what it's sounding like from others and yourself, I won't need to try to make things more complicated. In fact, from what your suggesting, this might not be realistic project for this class. No offense, but I truly hope your wrong about how long it would take me, because I think this would be a wonderfully fun project to do. I would have a partner and fairly easy access to materials including a vacuum equipment, so that would speed up the process at least somewhat. As we get a little closer to the class I'll probably have a researched much more on the topic and will know if it seems like a possible project.I definitely glad to have your opinion. And good luck on your fusor, I hope it works out!

Thanks for your time,
-Greg

[Chris Bradley]

I would tend to reverse the question. a) How long do you want to take and b) what equipment do you have that can already do the job? If you think you can quickly get a chamber evacuated and a high voltage applied to some internal electrodes, then just do that to start and then build up the complexity of the system. eg..Then add a feed to admit other gases instead of atmospheric... Then add vacuum pressure regulation... Try to create your own Langmuir probe.... Experiment with how to measure vacuum pressure (this can get very tricky and involved at unit micron pressures)... these are just things you could usefully engage in on the way to making a working fusor. But you could also 'stop by' other experimentation on the way - the response to ac currents - ionisation by RF induction - the application of DC or AC magnetic fields - the sublimation/sputtering and subsequent differential coating of films on various material surfaces and how to use electric charge to manupulate that. Get through all that to a competent level and not only will it give you some good ideas on how to develop a more advanced fusor but if you come to generally understand these things then it will give you a good grounding for all manner of high-tech jobs involving industrial plasmas.

Gee... sounds so much fun maybe I'll give some of these a go!!

If you don't get to a point where you can admit deuterium and apply high voltages, so what! But if you do, then you have the excitement (!!) of neutron/x-ray metrology and potentially some interesting activation experiments to [cautiously] explore.

If you increment its complexity from what you already have available you will both learn incrementally all manner of things about low pressure gas discharges plus you can always point to how far you managed to get as 'the' project, i.e. if you've got something going within a week, then at least you've got something going even if the next 9 weeks of improvements prove somewhat fruitless!!

I hope that serves to inspire you a little towards this fascinating subject.

all the best!

Chris MB.

[Carl Willis]

Hi Greg,

Fusors make fine undergrad projects. My undergrad thesis concerning neutron activation with fusors can be downloaded here:

http://carlwillis.files.wordpress.com/2 ... hesis2.doc

They are also fine high-school projects. And people work on them at the graduate, post-graduate, and professional levels as well of course. The only real distinction is the degree of resources and background the builder is likely to have, and the complexity of the project's goals.

Based on my own experiences, I have often counseled beginners to plan on at least a year if they want to make a basic neutron-producing fusor and actually do something with it. Most "newbies" want to (or think they can) rush it. No part of the work is particularly demanding, but it is very multi-disciplinary and takes patience with your own natural progress as well as with the customary delays waiting for surplus deals, the UPS truck, or a machine shop to finish some work for you. Plan on spending a couple thousand dollars.

Good luck,
Carl

[chronothread]

Chris MB,

I'll have to see if we need to state a definite goal or if we can just end with however far we got with our project. If it can end any where that would be great because if worst comes to worst we could just fall back on producing plasma. If possible I would want to be able to build the fusor in ten months. I know that's a very short time, but I could do most of the research and designing before the start of the ten months and I would have a partner helping me along the way. Plus we have fairly easy access to just about any of the materials we would need I think. With all this in mind does 10 weeks sound even the slightest bit realistic?

Thanks for all your help,
-Greg

[chronothread]

Hi Carl,

Sorry if my original post made it seem as if I thought building a fusor would be an insignificant task. I think very much the opposite. It seems like an amazing challenge that would also be a lot of fun. And thank you for your thesis, my professor was a little skeptical when I suggested I could build a fusor and he asked me to bring in a paper on it from someone else. I'll be bringing in the "World's Simplest Fusor" paper and if it's okay with you I'd probably bring in your thesis as well. As for the building time you recommend a year. For the time of the project for the class we have ten weeks. On the other hand, we'd have almost all the materials provided for us, including the vacuum equipment, and it would be at the University so there wouldn't be shipping waits. There's a student machine shop for which I've already taken a training course at and so I can handle much of the simple machine work (lathe, mill, etc.) myself, and there's a professional machine shop right in the building I'll be working in. I'm not sure yet, but we may be able to have the parts machined for us for free during this class. Plus, I'll also have a partner as dedicated as myself working one it. All this will dramatically shorten the time, but from what you're suggesting it probably still won't be fast enough. I don't want to rush through it, but I won't have money to buy my own materials so I have to start when the class allows me to so I get to borrow parts for free. Is there any possibility ten weeks might be enough or should I start looking for a different project to do next semester?

Thanks much for all your help,
-Greg

[Nanos]

Whilst we wait for those with greater experience than I to come up with some man-hour figures, I might suggest 500 hours to be a rough estimate, so if you and your partner put in 4 hours each per day for 10 weeks...

I'd say any project is going to be difficult, no matter what you choose.

Doable in the time frame, I'd say yes, difficult and take up every waking moment, probably yes too!

Just because something is difficult, shouldn't mean we should choose something easier

But try and flesh out a plan/schedual and do your best to stick with it, which might well mean catch up periods keeping you up a bit late at night, or meaning your have to miss your favourite TV show to study, or work extra early in the morning.

And remember, the only difference generally between those successful people and those not, is hard work..

[Nanos]

> That for each thing we learn we realize how much less we know.

This I'd say is a particularly important wisdom.

(And is one reason I love hanging around old folk, as they tend to know a lot of them )

[Nanos]

It would also be great to have daily updates either here or on a blog so we can all keep an eye on how well things are going. (Even youtube videos might be nice..)

[Chris Bradley]

I'd suggest the long-and-the-short of the answers you've got is that a) it can be considerably involved, should you go the distance, and b) but that's no good reason not to try as you will gain hugely by the effort.

The other thing to say is simply that you say this is a spring project? Why not start it now and see what kit in the department there is and how it works. There may be a time deadline at the end of your project, but the start is when you make it. Go see if the kit can do the job - today! Scoping a project and forming an understanding of what is possible or not is actually an intended, intrinsic piece of learning for the project, I expect!!

best regards,

Chris MB.

[chronothread]

Nanos,

Unfortunately the decision isn't just whether it's going to be difficult or not. I will have other classes and likely a job at the same time. So consuming every waking moment isn't the best choice. Again though, thank you for all your suggestions. I'm extremely happy to have people who will just go out of there way to give their help. I'll let you know if I come up with any more news.

-Greg

[chronothread]

Chris MB,

There's not really a kit, just more they'll have some, if not all, of the components I need. If I could get started now I certainly would, but since it is the majority of the grade for that class I'm not sure if the professor would be wanting us to start a couple months early. Whether it be that we would be having an advantage over the other students, or just that part of the point of the class is deciding on a project we could do in that amount of time I'm not sure if he'll approve. On the other hand he might, so I'll go talk to him about it tomorrow. Again, thanks for all your help and suggestions.

-Greg

[Larry Upjohn]

What an opportunity! I have the advantage of seeing your challenge from extended academic and professional experience where being able to select such a project was was very limited by time and resources.

Use your initiative now prior to beginning the class to focus and understand the effort required to accomplish a limited set of well defined milestones noted in both Tom Lignon's paper and Carl's thesis( which you have already begun here). When you start your class you will have a physical budget that you can use to map your time most productively for the 10 week class period. I would thoroughly investigate the resources at your disposal so that you know next spring that the list of parts and equipment needed are actually available for your use and quick assembly. Most folks that run the equipment storerooms really appreciate some one genuinely interested in their knowledge and talents in maintaining everything possibly needed for the physics department. It also may save hours later to find out if the vacuum pumps and guages, etc. on the shelf have been maintained and are functional. Stuff that has a layer of dust without any visible maintenance history will consume waisted hours that need to be preserved for good science. Detective work on your part now will help avoid this encounter with this time consuming black hole. Buy a two dollar bound composition notebook (electronic version works too) and keep a running talley of time spent, subjective thoughts of what seems right and wrong, objective lists of what is available, references here and elsewhere relating to your project, and finally "ahaa" moments when you remember that it takes a wrench set to assemble vacuum fittings (hopefully your supply room had lots of nice "ConFlat" stuff for you to use).

Lastly, Enjoy your opportunity to discover the profound reality that your study to date really relates to the physical world. When you take the book knowledge and apply it to your own project (not just a canned lab project) and see it come together and do what you anticipate you will be rewarded beyond any temporary frustrations you have experienced!

P.S. As noted above, come back here with your questions, your failures and most of all your successes. It's the meat of this group! Best wishes, Larry Upjohn.

[Carl Willis]

Hi Greg,

I think you can probably make the best assessment of what you can accomplish in ten weeks. It's true that you have a big step up if the school already has some of the more dear apparatus, particularly a vacuum system and high voltage supply. Regardless of the course timeline you were given, I suspect your love affair with the fusor will last longer, and you'll find that there are a lot of opportunities to do good physics with it above and beyond the necessarily limited scope of one ten-week class.

Some great professional literature on IEC fusion comes from the University of Wisconsin nuclear engineering program. Their website supplies many of their papers for free. If any faculty need convincing that this is a fertile and active field in academic research, I'd turn there for the evidence.

Best of luck with it.

-Carl

[Nanos]

It maybe wise to get yourself in the queue for bits N pieces, otherwise some other student will nab the bits you want!

I would tend to say that having an advantage over others because you did more homework is generally what life is about, you win by simply working harder and longer than the other guy. (If you happen to be smarter, even the better! hopefully they haven't outlawed that yet..)

[Nanos]

Every waking moment that your not studying something else or working that is

Discipline is rather an old fashioned concept not employed much these days I notice, with it you can achieve much which you set out to do, so if you was to train yourself like martial arts folk do with a 10 week stint of hardwork and no Simpsons, you'd suprise yourself at what you can achieve.

[chronothread]

Ok, so I've presented the idea to one of the professors who is going to be in charge of the class I'm taking (he's probably the most important one regarding the project stuff) and he's very skeptical of it being a good idea for a project. I had shown him Carl Willis's thesis to convince him that it would even work, but now he just doesn't believe that it's realistic in the time we have. I think I'd like to get started on it right away so I have time, but I need his permission first before I could begin gathering parts. I think I might be able to convince him if I had something to fall back on if I ran out of time. I don't think it'd come to that, but that would probably help convince him to let me do the project. So I was wondering if there was anyway to measure and prove plasma production without going much out of the way of building the fusor. That way I can fall back on just plasma production if I run out of time.

Thanks!

-Greg Olmschenk

[Chris Bradley]

I think we've just about exhausted the good advice! I broke a task down, as you're asking, in;

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1629#p10402

Ask if he thinks some of those are do-able, he will be more familar with, e.g., a Langmuir probe than a fusor. He probably has his own concerns and is wondering if he knows enough, about what you're proposing, to be able to support you when you might need it.

This is a self-help group with the emphasis on the 'self'. There's help here, but I wouldn't rely on the chance of someone answering your questions on a public forum if your career qualifications are at stake. Your Prof is probably expressing similar concerns for you, and if he's not comfortable with your choice of project then I think it is for that reason that your project could run away from you both.

Good luck!

Chris MB.