If they weren't doing this in a suburb I'd say 'Congrats'-- but to knowingly be generating x-rays in a residential neighborhood is really, really selfish and disrespectful to neighbors.
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“I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”
41–50 of 134 posts
Re: “I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”
#42If they weren't doing this in a suburb I'd say 'Congrats'-- but to knowingly be generating x-rays in a residential neighborhood is really, really selfish and disrespectful to neighbors.
I think this is overstating the risk a little bit.
Looking at the video linked elsewhere, this was run in a bedroom on the second or even third floor of a single-family residence. He mentions not being able to detect x-rays more than 35ft from the device. I think a neighbor would have to be trying to get in range to be affected.
Here's the video again, queued up to the view out the bedroom window: https://youtu.be/92M5qcjDkaU?t=1m5s
Re: “I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”
#43This 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."
And at least from my experience, that is wrong wrong wrong.
I was a solidly B student in high school, but I had some extracurriculars (not quite building fusion reactors) that I devoted an absurd amount of time to and excelled at. And I got into MIT.
Re: “I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”
#44This 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."
And at least from my experience, that is wrong wrong wrong. I was a solidly B student in high school, but I had some extracurriculars (not quite building fusion reactors) that I devoted an absurd amount of time to and excelled at. And I got into MIT.
If you don't mind me asking, how long ago was this?
Re: “I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”
#45Earlier 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.
Lol what. Grad school values independent research much, much more than grades.
Re: “I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
And at least from my experience, that is wrong wrong wrong. I was a solidly B student in high school, but I had some extracurriculars (not quite building fusion reactors) that I devoted an absurd amount of time to and excelled at. And I got into MIT.
If you don't mind me asking, how long ago was this?
Not op, but for me getting into MIT was fall of 1997.
Re: “I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”
#47A video of their reactor setup, including a part where they prep and run it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92M5qcjDkaU
This is great. A couple of high school kids just blew me away. I had to look up safe radiation levels after watching their Geiger counter. (Apparent answer: that's a lot of radiation, but a pretty short exposure.) Side note: the view of the hills and mountains from the reactor room is gorgeous.
> Side note: the view of the hills and mountains from the reactor room is gorgeous.
Agreed. The twins' fusor.net profile says the they live in Berkeley, CA, a suburb across the bay from San Francisco. At 1min into the video I'm fairly the shot is from Berkeley looking across the bay to San Francisco. The mountains in the background look like the ones just south of San Francisco.
If you head a bit farther up the hill from where they say they live, the view is quite pretty: https://simplyrunningonfaith.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/img...
Actually now I think about it the city of Berkeley passed an ordinance declaring it a Nuclear-free zone, so I wonder if this project is legal.
Re: “I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you don't mind me asking, how long ago was this?
Not op, but for me getting into MIT was fall of 1997.
Yeah, I ask because the highschool workload and expectations have frankly changed. Being a solid B student doesn't get you into MIT (at least, that's what is drilled into your head)
Re: “I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”
#49Wow! I wonder what exact steps are involved in getting from "I want to build a fusion reactor" to actually having a working prototype in your room. He mentions fusor.net; am I right in assuming that there are entire communities dedicated to building this kind of stuff? What is their history? How did they get started? Were they around before the internet? Fascinating!
Re: “I built a fusion reactor in my bedroom – AMA”
#50This 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."
And at least from my experience, that is wrong wrong wrong. I was a solidly B student in high school, but I had some extracurriculars (not quite building fusion reactors) that I devoted an absurd amount of time to and excelled at. And I got into MIT.
I would have to imagine these days average high school GPA for incoming freshman to MIT is > 4.0