

Particle Accelerator That Can Fit On a Tabletop - rbanffy
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130620132412.htm

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fnordfnordfnord
UT press release for those that don't trust SciendeDaily
[http://www.utexas.edu/news/2013/06/20/particle-
accelerator-t...](http://www.utexas.edu/news/2013/06/20/particle-accelerator-
that-can-fit-on-a-tabletop-opens-new-chapter-for-science-research/)

This opens up the possibility for a huge number of measurements and
experiments that would be too expensive to do at a national lab.

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joshuaellinger
My dad worked on the first accelerator lab at UT many years ago.

He tells this story about someone accidentally accelerating a mass on a
prototype rail gun in the basement. Someone got a unit conversion wrong -- it
went through about 5 walls before it got stopped by a lot of dirt.

So my first reaction to undergrads with high energy accelerators is: what
could possibly go wrong? It still sounds mighty cool.

~~~
dave20fold
"So my first reaction to undergrads with high energy accelerators is: what
could possibly go wrong?"

I have some experience in that matter, so I can tell you what might go wrong.
Back in the mid nineties, I was an undergrad and working on my first startup.
Part of the project was building a 200 keV accelerator (much lower energy than
than the ones in the article, but still high enough to get into trouble with).

The first big problem was the high voltage. Getting shocked by the 30,000 volt
ion source supply was damn painful: it felt like hitting your finger with a
sledgehammer. I only got a shock from the main supply once; for about 15
minutes I kept asking the other guys, "Am I dead? Are you sure I'm not dead?".
It wasn't actually as painful as the 30kV supply. It was never hard to be safe
with HV when everything was working properly - it was when things broke or two
guys were trying to fix something at the same time that accidents happened.

As you might guess, we didn't have a lot of 'adult supervision'. We learned as
we went along. Once we had a bit of a fright when we got the accelerator up
and running. Spence, the part-timer old-timer engineer who would help us out
on many things, showed up with a Geiger counter and showed us how much
radiation was coming off the device. We learned a lot about radiation safety
and shielding that week. I wonder how much exposure we would have received if
Spence had not interceded.

And then you can get into free neutrons, and activation, and all sorts of
other things. It's a real education. If you ever talk to one of those kids who
make Farnsworth fusors, they end up going through the same learning curve.
Luckily they have a bit of a community around that now, so they can share
knowledge and not kill themselves too easily.

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rdl
You can pick up a much lower energy electron accelerator if you're willing to
go dumpster diving for a CRT, right? Obviously there's a huge difference
between what you can do with something like this vs. the energies in a CRT vs.
CERN or a national lab, but it's interesting that the technology was so
widespread.

~~~
ChuckMcM
True, but the energy in the electrons is so low you can barely make phosphor
glow. When you get GeV electrons you can make x-rays, and with x-rays you can
do many interesting things.

One of the more interesting things you can do with a table top particle
accelerator is kick start a Thorium reactor. There is a team in the UK doing
this [1] but with a much bigger accelerator.

[1]
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2001548/Elec...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2001548/Electron-
Model-Many-Applications-Technology-save-world.html)

