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The new Einstein?
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Von Kriplespac
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 3:39 am    Post subject:  The new Einstein?
Subject description: "Friggen Finally." - Tony the Metro cop from Concerned
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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. 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 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.

This year, Thiago was a semifinalist for the Siemens Foundation's National Research Competition. He plans to enter the Science and Engineering Fair of Metropolitan Detroit, which is in March, in hopes of qualifying to be in the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in New Mexico in May.

To his mom and dad, he's still reminiscent of the 5-year-old who toiled over a kid-friendly chemistry set and, then at age 9, was able to change the battery in his older brother's car.

Now, in a small room in the basement, Thiago has set up a science lab -- where bottles marked "potassium hydroxide" and "methanol" sit on shelves and a worn, old book, titled "The Atomic Fingerprint: Neutron Activation Analysis" piled among others in the empty sink.

Thiago's mom, Natalice Olson, initially was leery of the project, even though the only real danger from the fusion machine is the high voltage and small amount of X-rays emitted through a glass window in the vacuum chamber -- through which Olson videotapes the fusion in action..

But, she wasn't really surprised, since he was always coming up with lofty ideas.

"Originally, he wanted to build a hyperbaric chamber," she said, adding that she promptly said no. But, when he came asking about the nuclear fusion machine, she relented.

"I think it was pretty brave that he could think that he was capable to do something so amazing," she said.

Thiago's dad, Mark Olson, helped with some of the construction and electrical work. To get all of the necessary parts, Thiago scoured the Internet, buying items on eBay and using his age to persuade manufacturers to give him discounts. The design of the model came from his own ideas and some suggestions from other science-lovers he met online.

Someday, he hopes to work for the federal government -- just like his grandfather, Clarence Olson, who designed tanks for the Department of Defense after World War II. Thiago, who is modest and humble about his accomplishment, said he knew from an early age what he would do for a living.

"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."

source: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2006611190639


I'm actually speechless regarding this. Razz

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Team SomeGuy
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 4:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Nifty. This had better be for real.

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Clarkson
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Joined: 25 Aug 2004
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 10:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

So not all basement dwellers are anime-loving weeaboo fags?




Holy cow.

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Crimsonum
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 1:59 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

wow...a tiny nuclear power plant on his house's basement? O_o that's...impressive...very impressive...I'm just wondering about the amount of radiation that the fission creates Neutral

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John Galt
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread


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Mr. Pokey
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 3:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Yuri 06 wrote:
wow...a tiny nuclear power plant on his house's basement? O_o that's...impressive...very impressive...I'm just wondering about the amount of radiation that the fission creates Neutral


It's only fusion.
And it just, IIRC, emits some neutrons, but they can decay the walls of the reactors, making them radioactive.

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Clazzy
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 27, 2006 7:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Nuclear fission is the most radioactive one, releasing wads of radiation. I can't recall, but decay of uranium-235 probably emits gamma rays. Nuclear fusion, however, is a much better way to go. The high temperatures of the reactor fuse two hydrogen ions (i.e. two protons) to form helium ions. I'd assume that protons and electrons collide to form neutrons and neutrinos, allowing full helium nuclei to be formed.
By the way, this releases a lot of energy due to something called binding energy. When two hydrogen nuclei fuse to form helium, they actually lose mass in the form of energy (about 0.7% if I recall), which ends up as a hell of a lot of energy. Stable nuclear fusion has come a long way in recent years and we'll probably see a fully functional nuclear fusion reactor powering our homes within ten years.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 3:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

ah, thanx for the info, Clazzy. I read it was fission, so that's why I was asking...I was also amazed more when I heard it was fusion...but...so far, doesn't a machine like that eat more energy than it could produce?

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Team SomeGuy
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 6:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Not necessarily.

Nuclear fusion essentially gives very high bang for the buck. It takes a lot of effort to start a fusion reaction but the mass-to-energy coefficient when that mass is lost turns the energy input By that (or some fancy calculation) and the output energy is sometimes exponentially higher. Case in point, the Sun, on a galactic level it takes the energy level of wiping your ass once but the output it produces is on a galactic size scale someone running 25 km in 2 hrs.

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Clazzy
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 29, 2006 12:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Nuclear fusion just requires high temperatures, that's a doddle. Maintaining a steady rate of fusion is then the next big step and then the reaction should mostly sustain itself as a lot of heat is released. Just like how a petrol engine needs an initial spark, a nuclear fusion device needs an input of energy.

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