Already happened.
Posted on 11/22/2006 3:05:23 AM PST by ajolympian2004
DETROIT — On the surface, Thiago Olson is like any typical teenager.
He's on the cross country and track teams at Stoney Creek High School in Rochester Hills, Mich. He's a good-looking, clean-cut 17-year-old with a 3.75 grade point average, and he has his eyes fixed on the next big step: college.
But to his friends, Thiago is known as "the mad scientist."
In the basement of his parents' Oakland Township, Mich., home, tucked away in an area most aren't privy to see, Thiago is exhausting his love of physics on a project that has taken him more than two years and 1,000 hours to research and build — a large, intricate machine that, on a small scale, creates nuclear fusion.
Nuclear fusion — when atoms are combined to create energy — is "kind of like the holy grail of physics," he said.
In fact, on www.fusor.net, the Stoney Creek senior is ranked as the 18th amateur in the world to create nuclear fusion. So, how does he do it?
Pointing to the steel chamber where all the magic happens, Thiago said on Friday that this piece of the puzzle serves as a vacuum. The air is sucked out and into a filter.
Then, deuterium gas — a form of hydrogen — is injected into the vacuum. About 40,000 volts of electricity are charged into the chamber from a piece of equipment taken from an old mammogram machine. As the machine runs, the atoms in the chamber are attracted to the center and soon — ta da — nuclear fusion.
Thiago said when that happens, a small intense ball of energy forms.
He first achieved fusion in September and has been perfecting the machine he built in his parents' garage ever since.
"I was always interested in science," he said. "It's always been my best subject in school."
But, his mom had other ideas.
"I thought he was going to be a cook," Natalice Olson said, "because he liked to mix things."
Now that the story is out - look for local officials to pitch a fit about the going ons in his basement. "son, you need a permit to do that"
Perhaps he can get a research grant to work with Fleischmann and Pons.
He's just one mistake away from either vaporizing himself, or becoming the next superhero! ("While working in his lab late one night, Thiago accidentally exposes himself to some highly-charged deterium...")
Already happened.
at your local Tritium-R-Us store.
Probably can't.
Wow! He's a cutie too.
Too bad my daughter is not ten years older. We are in the next city over.
I can still remember our thinking behind doing this... let's just start mixing stuff to see what happens.
I tend to look at stories like this as a counter to those folks in the media and elsewhere who constantly malign our young people in this country, from K - 12 and college age. Thiago Olson is living proof that our GREATEST generation is yet to come. In my experience he is typical of many teenagers today. The small percentage of 'bad' kids get all the publicity in the media, whereas the overwhelming majority who are doing well do not.
They say that'll make you go blind, I hear.
Anybody remember the Boy Scout who irradiated his Pennsylvania neighborhood when he began conducting experiments in his basement? IIRC, the had to demolish surrounding homes and pour concrete over the foundations.
Yeah..but can he do his own Taxes...
I'd love to see the family's eletric meter zipping around at high speed. It could definitely cause brain fusion when daddy has to send that check to Detroit Edison.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. What must his parents' electric bill look like?
I built my first laser back in 8th grade (about 1964) as a Science Fair project. In the process I shorted out some very large capacitors and almost killed myself. My mom, who was upstairs, heard the load bang and called down to see if I was OK. I quakingly yelled back- yeah I'm fine.
She did not learn the truth until I was over 40!
Recruit that boy!!!
After:
hold muh HI-C and watch this?
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