fusor
Sign in to savethumb|A homemade fusor A fusor is a device that uses an electric field to heat ions to a temperature at which they undergo nuclear fusion. The machine induces a potential difference between two metal cages, inside a vacuum. Positive ions fall down this voltage drop, building up speed. If they collide in the center, they can fuse. This is one kind of an inertial electrostatic confinement device – a branch of fusion research.
~30 min read
Encyclopedic overview
27 sectionsContents
- Mechanism
- Underlying physics
- Fusor concept
- Losses
- History
- Design
- Work at Farnsworth Television labs
- Recent developments
- Fusion in fusors
- Basic fusion
- Net power
- In fusors
- Common considerations
- Modes of operation
- Power density
- Thermalization of the ion velocities
- Electrodes
- Radiation
- Safety
- Commercial applications
- Neutron source
- Medical isotopes
- Patents
- See also
- References
- Further reading
- External links
thumb|A homemade fusor A fusor is a device that uses an electric field to heat ions to a temperature at which they undergo nuclear fusion. The machine induces a potential difference between two metal cages, inside a vacuum. Positive ions fall down this voltage drop, building up speed. If they collide in the center, they can fuse. This is one kind of an inertial electrostatic confinement device – a branch of fusion research.
A Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor is the most common type of fusor. This design came from work by Philo T. Farnsworth in 1964 and Robert L. Hirsch in 1967. A variant type of fusor had been proposed previously by William Elmore, James L. Tuck, and Ken Watson at the Los Alamos National Laboratory though they never built the machine.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “fusor” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.