Freshman's nuclear fusion reactor has USU physics faculty in awe

deseretnews.com ^ | 9-16-03 | Alan Edwards

[Paul Atreides]

After ten, the eleventh one is free.

[Mark Felton]

Utah's own Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television.

John Logie Baird -- 1888-1946 is considered the original inventor of televison (albeit a different technology than the all electronic tube)

[GOPJ]

Inside joke?

I wonder if that scrap yard had a calendar with naughty pictures of Madame Curie on the wall.

[Held_to_Ransom]

what won first place??

What else? A perpetual motion machine. It will be on the market just as soon as the Feds can determine it's life cycle by testing.

[Young Werther]

The Intel Science Fair has multiple awards and categories:

He didn't actually come in "SECOND"

Physics - Presented by Intel Foundation Intel will present Best of Category Winners with a $5,000 scholarship and a high-performance computer. Additionally, a $1,000 grant will be given to their school and the Intel ISEF Affiliated fair they represent.

Intel ISEF Best of Category Award of $5,000 for Top First Place Winner

PH053 Chaotic Fluids: An Examination of Phase Transitions in Taylor-Couette Flow Mairead Mary McCloskey, 17, Loreto College, Coleraine, Co Derry, Northern Ireland

First Award of $3,000 PH029 Is Eating Blueberry Pie Bad for You? Jennifer Anne D'Ascoli, 17, Academy of the Holy Names, Albany, New York

PH053 Chaotic Fluids: An Examination of Phase Transitions in Taylor-Couette Flow Mairead Mary McCloskey, 17, Loreto College, Coleraine, Co Derry, Northern Ireland

Second Award of $1,500 PH005 The Effect of Salinity on the Production and Duration of Antibubbles Michael J. Pizer, 14, University School of Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

PH040 Magnetoplasmadynamics: Ionization and Magnetic Field Ray Chengchuan He, 19, Hempfield High School, Landisville, Pennsylvania

This is our boy. Chaotice Fluids "First"

PH046 Nuclear Fusion Reactor Apparatus Craig J. Wallace, 18, Spanish Fork High School, Spanish Fork, Utah

[coloradan]

I wouldn't take this article too serious until someone with a physics degree from somewhere other than Utah certifies it as credible. Smells of really bad science to me.

It's pretty credible to me: Here's the relevent part: Wallace's detector measures 36 neutrons per minute just in background radiation from space, and the device's usual output adds only four neutrons per minute. People in airplanes absorb much more than that.

In other words, the machine produces an output of neutrons that is barely over 10% of background levels. One neutron every 15 seconds is, well, not very many. "Notably absent is shielding," the article says elsewhere.

In contrast, if the cold fusion experiments were generating the heat they were said to generate from fusion, Pons and Fleischmann would have been promptly killed from all the neutrons that would have had to have been generated. Many, many orders of magnitude different.

[Diogenesis]

Wrong. Cold fusion does not give neutrons.

At the recent MIT demonstration of cold fusion, FReepers were present,
and several presented, including a demo.

You might download some recent papers and get up-to-date.

some update here for FReepers interested in CF

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[hopespringseternal]

I wouldn't take this article too serious until someone with a physics degree from somewhere other than Utah certifies it as credible. Smells of really bad science to me.

Well, the guy who invented the thing died in 1971, so it is hardly new ground. While it is mildly impressive that a high school kid built it, the machine itself is rather simple to be terribly impressed by its construction: the vaccuum pump connected to it is more complex and harder to build.

And it sounds like he is operating it at a ridiculously low energy level, albeit enough to demonstrate the principle.

[Not_Who_U_Think]

' what won first place?? '

First place doesn't exist. Do not talk of this.

You crack me up ;)

[sourcery]

thus the need for the TV camera to see the plasma

And a plasma screen to view it, of course!

[delapaz]

yeah my wife is always throwing out my spare neutron detectors without asking. I hate that.

[Paradox]

Sweet! I remember reading about Philo and his fusion dreams on the Internet, and filed it away in my head as one of those things I would try to build some day. Its great that a guy this young would do it! He could be our new Edison.

[thegreatbeast]

The thing has been crawled over by all manner of scientists- it's safe.
The reporter is a dolt though:"It took two years of gathering materials and six months of assembly, but the final product actually, incongruously, works." After all that work and effort put in by a real bright kid, it was supposed to fail? Maroon!

[coloradan]

I disagree. I have attended a talk presented by Fleischman himself at Caltech, and I'm sorry to say he has gone off the deep end - though his talk was entitled "new developments in cold fusion" there wasn't any new developments presented, and the data he did present was unscientific and full of holes. I have not seen any evidence of cold fusion - and that said, I would like very much for it to be true.

[lawdude]

"SECOND PLACE?? what won first place??"

A Sensory innovation device that simulates the feeling one gets when swapping spit with Madonna or Brittney.\

[Bogey78O]

Madame Curie was a female scientist from the early 20th century who made many discovries dealing with radiation. I believe they named an element after her. Curium?

[Rose in RoseBear]

So I went to the ISEF website and found the following:

Physics - Presented by Intel Foundation
Intel will present Best of Category Winners with a $5,000 scholarship and a high-performance computer. Additionally, a $1,000 grant will be given to their school and the Intel ISEF Affiliated fair they represent.

Intel ISEF Best of Category Award of $5,000 for Top First Place Winner
PH053 Chaotic Fluids: An Examination of Phase Transitions in Taylor-Couette Flow Mairead Mary McCloskey, 17, Loreto College, Coleraine, Co Derry, Northern Ireland

First Award of $3,000
PH029 Is Eating Blueberry Pie Bad for You? Jennifer Anne D'Ascoli, 17, Academy of the Holy Names, Albany, New York
PH053 Chaotic Fluids: An Examination of Phase Transitions in Taylor-Couette Flow Mairead Mary McCloskey, 17, Loreto College, Coleraine, Co Derry, Northern Ireland

Second Award of $1,500
PH005 The Effect of Salinity on the Production and Duration of Antibubbles Michael J. Pizer, 14, University School of Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
PH040 Magnetoplasmadynamics: Ionization and Magnetic Field Ray Chengchuan He, 19, Hempfield High School, Landisville, Pennsylvania
PH046 Nuclear Fusion Reactor Apparatus Craig J. Wallace, 18, Spanish Fork High School, Spanish Fork, Utah
PH054 Electron-Phonon Interactions in Carbon Nanotubes Edward Joesph Su, 18, William G. Enloe High School, Raleigh, North Carolina

Third Award of $1,000
PH024 A Siphoned Flowing Soap Film as a Model for Density-stratified Fluid Systems Jonathan Jacques Kamler, 17, Townsend Harris High School, Flushing, New York
PH026 Superconductivity in High Pressure Phases of Lithium Wei Gan, 18, Thomas Sprigg Wootton High School, Rockville, Maryland
PH028 The "Blackberry" Cluster: Thermodynamic Equilibrium and Potential Medical Applications of Giant Nanoscale Inorganic Molecules in Solution Brandon Stuart Imber, 17, Commack High School, Commack, New York
PH034 An Investigation of the Properties of the Plasma Plume Created by Laser Ablation Kevin E. Claytor, 16, Los Alamos High School, Los Alamos, New Mexico
PH052 Is the Wind Predictable? Nolan Herman Reis, 16, Palo Alto High School, Palo Alto, California

Fourth Award of $500
PH012 Absorption of Radioactive Isotopes Using Natural Zeolites Vanessa Anne Spini, 17, Gold Beach High School, Gold Beach, Oregon
PH018 Spectroscopy Never Sounded So Good Andrew Jared Herron, 18, Dallastown Area High School, Dallastown, Pennsylvania
PH039 Modeling the Dynamics of a Pneumatic Water Sprayer Ross Andrew Coleman, 18, Winner High School, Winner, South Dakota
PH044 IV. Measurements of Internal Electrostatic Confinement Electron Density using Microwave Interferometry Tianhui Li, 18, Oregon Episcopal School, Portland, Oregon
PH051 An Investigation into Automobile Aerodynamics Molly von der Heydt, 15, Falmouth Academy, Falmouth, Massachusetts
PH061 Design and Construction of an Air-cored Resonant Transformer and Quantification of Arc-induced Ozone Abram Levi Coley, 18, Big Sky High School, Missoula, Montana
PH062 A Study of DNA Adsorption Kinetics on OTS Surfaces Joseph Michael Barone, 17, West Islip High School, West Islip, New York

[bitcon]

Yup, in 1944 by G.T. Seaborg, R. A. James and A. Ghiorso during the Manhattan Project.

[Bogey78O]

And now we have Seaborgium. It just won't stop.