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Made a carbon-arc furnace, boiled glass, projected image of this on wall (no welding glasses);
Isolated two antibiotics from cultures made from spores found in backyard soil. Demonstrated zone of inhibition. Injected into mice (using real hypodermic syringes, ordered through the mail from Fisher Scientific). Mice survived.
Built my own gas supply for bunsen burners, using a mouthwash bottle filled with alcohol, an aquarium air pump and airstone, and some 3/8-inch Tygon tubing.
Made a pulsed rocket engine that (crudely) exploited shockwave interference to compress fuel. Measured its specific impulse.
Built four-bit binary adder out of relays made from wood, nails, paper clips, and copper wire.
Much photography, developed myself. Delighted self with harmonograms made by pointing camera upward at flashlight hung from ceiling on a string, flashlight had paper pinhole baffle over lens, lights off in basement, opened shutter and let it record flashlight movements for ten minutes or so. Beautiful images of mathematics in action.
Some mild explosives "play." No nukes, though.
When I read this kid's story in Harper's, my heart and admiration went out to him. He did much, much more than I, and showed incredible tenacity. It was impossible not to notice the magazine's wierd tone, which seemed to imply that the kid was deeply disturbed, living in a fantasy world that was indicative of some kind of psycho-pathology, or maybe a mild form of retardation. This while simultaneously describing his overall success at demonstrating neutron production and change in atomic weight of some of his reaction product. In other words, he was a delusional nut who somehow accidently did actual nuclear chemestry in his backyard.
I would love to find out what became of him. I hope his health wasn't injured, but, on the other hand, I understand the joy that would have driven him to ignore the risks to pursue his vision.
(steely)
This guy knows nothing about the nuclear power industry.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has a whining article in the Capitol Watch section today about how the Asians are whipping our behinds in math and science, and how we are going to soon be outsourcing "innovation." Look at how we treat our own local kids who could be innovators. Read Rocket Boys (upon which the movie October Sky was based) - those kids would have been locked up in juvenile hall today for what they did then. We claim we want "innovation" but we punish it when it actually rears its head.
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He became so radioactive that he claimed that when he died, he'd have to be disposed of as 'low level nuclear waste'.
As I recall, he made a living of giving lectures on his experience and having people test him with geiger counters...
--Boris
We only have the boy's word for it. A boy that flunked out of Jr. college and is a deck-hand in the Navy. What a bunch of crock!
