College Freshman Builds Fusion Reactor

Aiua writes "The Deseret Morning News is reporting that a Utah State University freshman has built a nuclear fusion reactor and compares how the student is similar to Philo T. Farnsworth (the inventor of the television and designer of the plans for a fusion reactor)."

Cool...

[RIAAwakka_nakka_bakk]

This is a great sign that not all kids and young adults have weak or corrupt minds. The ability of an American college freshman (or anyone else his age) to do this with the parts he used is simply amazing.

On the other hand, wouldn't the FBI be looking hard at him now that has built something like this?

Clever hoax?

[InfiniteWisdom]

$5 says this is proven to be a clever hoax soon.

You think this wouldn't be all over the papers?

So... not much, right?

[KRzBZ]

I mean, it's cool he could do this and all, but there's already 30 of these around the country, they don't produce any excess energy, other than that from what will soon be hundreds of little slash.fingers merrily typing away... Misleading intro to this story - I was all set for some kind of great breakthrough, and instead I get the equivalent of a SCO press staement - a story, some hot air, but nothing of real substance. Or am I missing some greater consequence of this?

Re:Cool...

[Greyfox]

Because like most Slashdot readers and unlike Homer Simpson, the FBI doesn't know the difference between fission and fusion. They just see the word "Nuclear" in front of it and add you to their teorrist watchlist.

D2O?

[ejeetify]

My main concern is how he was just able to go somewhere and buy heavy water. That's not something you should be able to up and buy. Also, it's damned expensive, IIRC.

Just some of my insight

[rzbx]

He isn't a die hard nerd that sits around reading books all day, getting straight A's, and spending time doing various things the stereotypical nerd would do. It goes to show that we need to understand that people don't all see things the same, learn the same, and fit in the same model we believe works so well. This college student is more a mechanic than any typical scientist.
I point all this to intellectual property. He was fortunately able to obtain most of his material cheaply and easily, but what about most hobbyists that want to fidle with new technology? Where do they get the money for new tools, machines, etc? If we applied an open source model to intellectual property and treated ideas not as property, but as what they really are, then we could accelerate scientific and technological progress greatly. What this college student did is quite amazing. The thing he built is only found in top notch institutions. I just think we need more plagiarism prevention, not patents. Btw, I'm sorry for being somewhat off-topic, but I feel that there is an important lesson to be learned here.

Re:So... not much, right?

[EnderWiggnz]

yeh, your missing it:

some 18 year old kid was able to do it.

thats pretty f'in impressive...

Re:Cool...

[sys$manager]

Or they could be worried that he may build a fusion bomb. [howstuffworks.com]

ugg think about it

[GISGEOLOGYGEEK]

This is no hoax, its an effect that has been known for many decades. It's just that no one, not even this guy have found a way to produce excess energy from it (as in producing more energy that it consumes in triggering the fusion)

This clever guy just happened to do it himself.

Its no big deal, no huge discovery, just an interesting scientific device. - Something to make the ignorant masses wonder how there couldnt be enough power to meet the US's demands during the big black out when we mastered fusion energy years ago.

The tinkerer deserves a pat on the back for making it work, however he deserves no prizes. He merely repeated well known science rather than doing something new.

Heck, I'd be growing diamonds in my back yard if I could afford to buy the super huge vintage world war 2 press at an industrial site down the road from me ... but they'd just be an inefficient curiosity too.

Fusion does not free energy make

[argoff]

I haven't RTFA'd it yet, but lets renember that making a fusion reactior is a lot different than making a fusion reactor that can generate more energy than is used to prime it. The former we've been doing for years, the latter - making one that outputs more energy than is put into it is the real trick.

Wow, he can follow instructions

[cybercrap]

Please, this is just bs. First off anybody can build one of these, schematics and tips and even a forum on getting help from others can be found at www.fusor.net . And this guys wins a science fair for no original thought. I guess the judges didn't know how to use google.

Re:Title is misleading

[Detritus]

From the description I read, it is nuclear fusion. It's just on a small scale.

Neutron generator tubes, that rely on deuterium-tritium fusion to generate neutrons, have been available for decades.

Re:ugg think about it

[Little Brother]

Heck, I'd be growing diamonds in my back yard if I could afford to buy the super huge vintage world war 2 press at an industrial site down the road from me ... but they'd just be an inefficient curiosity too.

That is exactly why this kid DOES deserve a prize. He managed to make the device without a $10,000 research/developement grant. No he didn't create anything revolutanary, but he did accomplish an extraordinary acheivement. I'll drink to him tonight. (not that I really need an excuse)

Re:First place - NOT KIDDING!!!

[Bob(TM)]

Having participated as contestant and (much) later judge, the projects that always impressed me the most were the ones that demonstrated the use scientific method to address a question. The question itself didn't have to be one of earth shaking significance - it simply had to be one for which the answer was not necessarily obvious.

A project I loved was one that sought the answer to the question of whether you get more wet running through the rain than walking. He built this chamber to simulate rain, attached a figure with absorbent material on it, and moved it at different speeds. Then, he measured the water collected on the material. The question wasn't pivotal but the project (the whole package - the examination of the details of the problem, the application of the scientific method, the consideration of errors and estimates of their contributions) demonstrated an honest attempt to look at a problem objectively and scientifically.

Just like you can't judge a book by it's cover, you can't judge a science fair project by it's title.

Re:Fusion does not free energy make

[the gnat]

Exactly. Nuclear fusion reactors have been around for years, it's just that nobody has ever been able to make one that produces more energy than you need to put in to keep the reaction going (in addition to the fuel being expended). The reactor this kid built is clearly "useless" as an energy source - which the article is very clear about - and not even remotely novel, but it's a pretty bitchin' project for a high-schooler.

Re:Required materials

[sys$manager]

Considering they figured this stuff out on slide rules in the '40s and '50s, it can't be that hard.

Re:Um....

[Paul d'Aoust]

I think the fact that you're able to ask this kind of question is what differentiates us from the other animals (oh, and we have less hair, by and large, unless you consider fish and reptiles). Humans seem to have acquired the ability to think really really big thoughts. And I mean, big!

I wonder if 'meaning' is really a meme, or is it for some reason part of our brains? I mean, did someone start searching for meaning, then other people started catching on, until we're all asking the question? I'm inclined to believe that the need to ask that question is part of our genetic makeup. I see evidence of this in the fact that everyone, throughout most of their life, seems so obsessed with this subject, and often go into despair when they can't find the answer to this question. It's almost as if the need for meaning is a fundamental need, as fundamental as the need for survival.

My two cents' worth. I really enjoyed your writ (especially the comment that most people's primary meme is "WTF?" -- I feel like that a lot of the time myself), and if I had any karma points I'd mod you up.

Re:CDs

[jimhill]

Let me be the first NukeE to mention that the reporter didn't quite hear correctly -- it's a "moderator". Which raises the question of why the kid didn't just put a couple of Ziploc baggies full of water between the gadget and his detector.

Re:Cool...

[afidel]

Yes and he will go to work at Fermilab or one of the other national labs and get to play with more big toys then he could ever dream of. It won't be until he is much older that he will even really think about the consequences of his lifes work. The outcome of that self reflection seems to be evenly split between those who think they have done good for humanity and those who disagree.

Slow news day

[th3axe]

I think it's mostly a human interest story with a very misleading title. It's sort of like some kid creating a 4 bit microprocessor with a magnifying glass and a soldering iron. He wins the science project, but he didn't do anything really new. The cool factor is there, but ultimately, it doesn't matter too much.

On the other hand, you can't deny the coolness factor. Wish I'd had that sort of support when I was a kid. My mom said I read too much science fiction and told me to go outside and get some exercise.

Re:Just some of my insight

[dasmegabyte]

Yes. The lesson is that if you get off your ass you can do interesting things. I don't see where intelelctual property comes into it. In fact, one could just as easily argue that, since he did nothing more than cobble together the type of generator that has been done before, that he has not advanced "science" at all. Sure, he's advanced his own knowledge, it certainly is an interesting and awesome project, but science hasn't moved an inch. That's why he only got SECOND place for this project -- he's shown he's a really talenter tinkerer, not the next Heisenberg.

As for applying an open source model to ideas...well, we already do that, stupid, it's called peer review. It manifests itself in the form of these cool, incredibly terse publications about the size of silver age comic books, with the words JOURNAL OF at the front of the title and a bunch of syllables at the end. This system is how we "know" cold fusion isn't real, or at the very least it isn't going to be easy. The methodology of experimentation is not prevented by intellectual property law. Patenting something doesn't mean nobody else understands how it works, or prevent you from improving upon it. Pantent law PROTECTS improvements. There is no DMCA for this sort of thing, no FBI agent will come to your lab. In the biotech field you can make as many AIDS cocktails as you like for research. Steal the recipe right out of the JAMA if you like. Shit, Glaxo wants you to. The more publications there are that back up their findings, the easier it is to get the FDA to lay off on them.

All patent law does is assure that the first guy to come up with a brilliant new concept will be allowed to make money from technologies based off of it. That's how researchers live...selling ideas that can be made into profits. Taking that away from them doesn't help science, mate.

Don't count your angels before the pinheads hatch

[Anonymous Coward]

Classic /. People arguing about the consequences of Wallace's actions before he's even taken those actions.

This little device? It's a toy. He found mechanical tricks to get the purity and the accuracy he needed. The main reason Farnsworth could make such a thing from Farnsworth's design is that in the 1930s none of the "junk parts" Wallace used were available. Hell, he got his deuterium from a twenty dollar can of heavy water. Farnsworth could only dream of that.

If I were going to speculate on Wallace's future actions in any way, it wouldn't be one of these "atom bomb inventor" speculations. I expect his mechanical cleverness will save someone somewhere a great deal of money at some point. Cheaper missiles, cheaper shuttles or cheaper refrigerators, who knows.

More evidence...

[LuYu]

This is just more evidence that the Internet is improving our lives. A science project such as this would have been barely imaginablie before the Internet.

It is also probable that the boy's access to information would have been too limited to compelete such a task without the Internet.

If corporations can be prevented from imprisoning this information for their short term profit, progress will be accelerated exponentially. It is essential that communication be kept free. Great discoveries are never made by old scientists (or should I say married scientists [slashdot.org]?). Therefore, young people need more access to information.

It seems that the monopoly profit model no longer "promote[s] the Progress of Science and useful Arts". Access to all information needs to be guaranteed for the future for progress. Profits are secondary to access.

Finally, if scientists are not tinkerers, what what is their purpose?

Now imagine the press coverage

[Anonymous Coward]

if a foreign student from, say, Pakistan had built such a device "from parts salvaged from junk yards and charity drops". Don't you think we'd see calls for a Junk Yard Security Management division of the DoHS?

Two cultures

[panurge]

The British academic C P Snow spent a lot of time arguing that there are now two cultures which really do not interact: Liberal arts (favored by the people who have the power in society, by the way) and science/engineering. There is very little cross fertilisation. Part of the reason that scientists and engineers for the most part get screwed is that they have this boring addiction to things that are testable, and to objective standards of truth. People who are basically prepared to put spin on anything set off with a huge advantage.

And why this apparently off-topic minor rant? Because we're seeing it here. The ones who probably can't even change a bicycle tire say "Oh that's easy, probably just followed the instruction book", not having the slightest clue about how difficult it is to make something from disparate parts. The ones who have got a clue or have been involved in projects like this have an idea of how difficult it really is, but actually they have no idea of how huge and insuperable the barrier is to 99% of the population - because they themselves are hardwired to know where to start.

It's about disparate rewards. The same level of skill and application this guy showed, applied to basketball or acting, might get him a multimillion dollar income. Why don't we perceive someone who spends hours bouncing a little ball around as being sad and geeky and having too much time on his hands? Why does someone who pretends to be other people, often not very well, get paid so much more than an astronaut or a fighter pilot who does something really, really difficult and dangerous?

Naive ramblings, I guess, but in the conversion of the human race from savannah apes to civilisation, it wasn't the actors and the basketball players that worked out how to bang the rocks together and how to get one stone to stick on top of another.

Philo T. WHO???

[LardBrattish]

Philo T. Farnsworth (the inventor of the television

And there was silly old me thinking it was John Logie Baird... Who's re-inventing history BTW? America or the UK?

Does anyone here has a clue about such projects ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean the title says nothing.
This can be repeating well-known stuff from literature, scientific speculation or genuine scientific research.
However what seems fishy to me is that some stuff needs expensive labs/devices. So it seems to me very unlikely that high-school students do this stuff without professional help.
Take e.g. the "ident. genes with NN" stuff.
This is either a bunch of worthless programs operating on some artificial test data or some professional institution provided them with test sets and probably even gave the starting point of the project.
Same for the RNA, Venus and asteriod projects.

Re:Strange

[TeknoHog]

Maybe in America, everything was invented by Americans independently of the rest of the world?

A European named Christopher Columbus found intelligent life in America in 1492. We're still waiting for Americans to do the same ;-)

(OT, this brings to mind my favourite horror movies, Nightwatch (Danish) and Ringu (Japanese). Why the heck did the Americans need to remake these? Both of them rely quite a lot on the milieu, and I imagine the psychological horror effect is diluted if they are taken into a more familiar environment.)

"Inventor of Television"?

[BigBadBus]

Well, thats a first. Has no-one heard of John Logie Baird?

Brilliant and Understandable

[cluckshot]

This guy makes reading equations and calculations a rational exercise and easy! He is the kind of guy we need in Physics, not those who have died and been reincarnated as god!

Re:Farnsworth?

[asscroft]

I think it was RCA, who first sold a remote control. It was a sound-wave or radio signal or something like that. It wasn't an infrared LED.

Wait, no before that there was a remote with the wires still attached. you'd run the wires across the floor of your living room. ...Scratch all that. It was Zenith....Here read someone elses more accurate history

http://www.modellbahnott.com/tqpage/ihistory.htm l

Or

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blr em otecontrols.htm

He changed a tire!!

[iamhassi]

"While Wallace was in grade school, his mother got a flat tire while he was riding with her. He fixed it."

Wow, he changed a tire while in grade school!! Kid must be some kind of genius!

Anyone suspicious that his only other accomplishment was changing a tire? Maybe I'm a pessimist, but it just seems strange he's never won any science fairs anywhere (or even placed), then suddenly builds a fusion reactor? "Craig and his father..." have to wonder how much work his dad put into this project.