One for Jake and Co..

a DIY Fusion Reactor you can make in your basement.

http://www.brian-mcdermott.com/what_it_takes.htm

I'm glad he lives ~800Km away from me though..
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

oooooo, shiny metal
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https://www.halfdonethings.com/

O the red wires connected to the.. black wire and the black wires connected to the?? yellow thing and thers a second head growin ouy my...
((BUGGER! BUGGER!))
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Tim Team Reaper.

im going to look like an idiot for asking this but what exactly does a fusion reactor or whatever that guys building do?

nobody's ever told me and ive never learned it fully


Look extremely impressive though
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Andrew Welch, Team Unconventional Robotics

that one makes fast neutrons (radiation)
converts hydrogen to helium
and mass to energy E = MC^2

however it consumes much more E than it makes

mostly its just damn cool.
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

E=mc2 is Energy equals Mass times the Speed of Light squared

For all those peeps who wondered what it means when you were saying it trying to look smart in science class
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Tim Team Reaper.

I am just dissapointed it does not say "Mr Fusion" on the side...

LOL it should say MR SHEEN.

So shiney.
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Tim Team Reaper.

quote:

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Originally posted by Valen:
that one makes fast neutrons (radiation)
converts hydrogen to helium
and mass to energy E = MC^2

however it consumes much more E than it makes

mostly its just damn cool.

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volume of homebush olympic pool roughly 50x25x3m = 3750000L ~ 3750000kg

q = c*m*deltaT
dt = 100
m = 3750000kg
c = 4186 J/Kg °C (for water)

q = 4186 * 3750000 * 100 = 1569750000000J

E = MC ^2
E/C^2 = M

C = 299792458 m/s.
M = 1.74e-5kg = 0.00000174kg = 0.00174g

uranium mass loss = 0.0046 AMU
1 AMU = 1.66 × 10−24 grams
uranium mass loss = 7.64E-030Kg

number of uranium decays needed
1.74e-5kg / 7.64E-030Kg = 2.28E+024
mass of uranium needed
2.28E+024 / 6.022e23 = 3.79 moles

molar mass of u238 = 238.0
mass of uranium required 902.02g
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Mechanical engineers build weapons, civil engineers build targets

Most people believed the Earth was flat too up until a few hundred years back...

So when asking the average four'n'twenty wielding joe to cope with algebra, the speed of light and a brain-bending concept like relativity, its no wonder they dump them all into the same "that complicated science stuff" basket in their head.. About all that most of them can remember is that Einstein had funny hair..

The 1Kg of Uranium thing would probably depend on whether you managed to achieve complete energy conversion or not. Conventional fission bombs ony convert something like .04% of their mass into energy (and thats still enough to make a darn big boom !). That C^2 multiplier in there means a very small amount of M turns into a very large amount of E.

[Edit: OK, Jake was posting while I was, and he got there with the numbers first.. They look realistic, except that isnt it difficult to fission an entire mass of U238 (as opposed to U235) ? I seem to remember something about U238 only fissioning when struck by neutrons of a certain energy level (slow ?) requiring a moderator to be mixed in with the reaction mass to slow down the fast neutrons emitted by the fissioning nuclei).

Nice Calculations though.. everyone follow that class ? Good, tomorrow we will allow exemptions for nuclear-powered bots once we replace the polycarb with lead shielding.

And to anyone who thinks we already know about all of the available energy sources out there, heres a favourite quotation of mine..

Take 3 bricks of about 1Kg mass each.

1 is made of Glowing Red-Hot Iron
2 is made of Room-Temperature Uranium 235
3 is made of Frozen Hydrogen-2 (Deuterium)

Ask a scientiest to rate them in terms of the energy that could potentially be extracted from each brick. Rewind 50 years and repeat. Then 100 years and repeat.

Without listing the answer (Which is probably obvious to anyone reading this thread), - If our concepts of where energy can be obtained from can do a total back-flip in the last 100 years, what are the chances that we now know it all and there arent any new sources waiting to be yet discovered ?

Food for thought in my opinion.. Never assume science knows it all.. When amateurs are building Nuclear-Fusion reactors in their basement, you can bet something new is going to pop up soon..
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

Whoops, spoke too soon.. looks like its already on the way..

Unlimited free energy by sinking a pipe into the depths of the ocean to tap cold water ? check this out..
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/craven.html?pg=1&topic=craven&topic_set=
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people

quote:

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mass of uranium required 902.02g

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quote:

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About all that most of them can remember is that Einstein had funny hair.

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True, but faling or passing at school has never been a reliable indicator of actual talent IMO. Many of history's "geniuses" were school dropouts.

All it proves is that you can think the same way that the teacher wants you to, which is probably the way *they* were taught to teach people 20 years or more ago..

That doesnt mean I reccomend deliberately failing school though.. doing well there makes it easier to get other places without having to first prove that you have talent in spite of your poor grades. The trick is doing well at school without letting them build walls around your mind and destroying your ability to "think outside the box".

Showing that you can conform when necessary, but still retain the ability to ask "stupid" questions like Einstein did... "What happens if you travel at the speed of light, then shine a torch in front of you ?" - "Mummy, why is the Sky blue ?" and other hard to answer questions like that that make most people go "ask your father, or dont be silly"..

Having the ability to ask questions like that and not be satisfied with the answer "because thats the way it is" is the trick to changing reality with new concepts like relativity and quantum theory and so on IMO..
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Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people