21–30 of 134 posts
hopefully this is a house in a low-density suburb and not an apartment. amazing achievement, but at the same time very dangerous to be generating x-rays out of your bedroom.
This kid is awesome but this particular comment really made me sad: "Spending 3+ hours a day on a project during junior and senior year did not help my grades. My counselor told me that I wouldn't get into the top colleges because of this reason. I believed her and didn't apply to my dream colleges."
Well, you can look at it this way, he would have never been well-served by the traditional society-determined path anyway. A project like this has the tendency to just blow away all other considerations. If you were hiring for a physics position, would you take the guy who got straight A's on his physics coursework, or the guy who built an effing nuclear reactor in his bedroom?
Stuff like this always reminds me of this kid (adult now): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Wilson
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a Farnsworth fusor, of course it's not. It's an enormous accomplishment for a couple of high school kids all the same - kind of makes you think of Rocket Ship Galileo , minus the moon Nazis.
When people see something like this, I think they immediately think of Tony Stark, or the Wright Brothers. Something quite romanticized. This teenage is probably smarter than I am, but he's not breaking even in his bedroom. He also mentions building a laser. > a wood burning CO2 laser turret I'd be interested in the details about that. I did some research about what it would take to build a basic laser years and year…
TEA lasers are basically just a few pieces of metal and high-voltage, seen them at high-school level quite a few times: http://www.sparkbangbuzz.com/tealaser/tealaser7.htm
CO2 lasers are relatively complex and are easiest if you buy some parts readymade, but can be completely homebuild as well: http://jarrodkinsey.org/co2laser/co2laser.html
There are tons of ressources online, a good overviw over different possibilities and basic information can be found here: http://www.repairfaq.org/sam/laserfaq.htm#faqtoc
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, you can look at it this way, he would have never been well-served by the traditional society-determined path anyway. A project like this has the tendency to just blow away all other considerations. If you were hiring for a physics position, would you take the guy who got straight A's on his physics coursework, or the guy who built an effing nuclear reactor in his bedroom?
The sad thing is that if you were faculty, looking for a graduate student to supervise, you'd probably pick the one with straight A's and no hobbies, because you could get them to do whatever you wanted, without risk of them getting their own ideas or leaving.
This kid is awesome but this particular comment really made me sad: "Spending 3+ hours a day on a project during junior and senior year did not help my grades. My counselor told me that I wouldn't get into the top colleges because of this reason. I believed her and didn't apply to my dream colleges."
"living things should not be within 35 feet as x-ray radiation is quite high" hopefully this is a house in a low-density suburb and not an apartment. amazing achievement, but at the same time very dangerous to be generating x-rays out of your bedroom.
This kid is awesome but this particular comment really made me sad: "Spending 3+ hours a day on a project during junior and senior year did not help my grades. My counselor told me that I wouldn't get into the top colleges because of this reason. I believed her and didn't apply to my dream colleges."
Something similar happened to me, I managed to end up somewhere close to what I wanted to be doing, but had I gone the "traditional" route it'd have been much easier with the same result.
A video of their reactor setup, including a part where they prep and run it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92M5qcjDkaU
Side note: the view of the hills and mountains from the reactor room is gorgeous.
"living things should not be within 35 feet as x-ray radiation is quite high" hopefully this is a house in a low-density suburb and not an apartment. amazing achievement, but at the same time very dangerous to be generating x-rays out of your bedroom.
He probably didn't actually run it in his bedroom, just built it there.
(From another top-level comment.)