It’s humorous how generally belongings you assume are unhealthy turn into good on reflection. Like many people, once I was a child, I used to be fascinated by science of every kind. As I bought older, I centered a bit extra, however that may come later. Dwelling in a small city, there weren’t many latest science and know-how books, so that you tended to learn by the identical ones time and again. Someday, my library bought a duplicate of the comparatively latest ebook “The Newbie Scientist,” which was a set of [C. L. Stong’s] Scientific American columns of the identical identify. [Stong] was {an electrical} engineer with vast pursuits, and people columns have been superb. The ebook solely had a snapshot of initiatives, however they have been superior. The journal, in fact, had much more initiatives, most of which have been exterior my finances and much more of them exterior my ability set on the time.
When you clicked on the hyperlinks, you most likely went down a really deep rabbit gap, so… welcome again. The ebook was printed in 1960, however the initiatives have been largely from the Nineteen Fifties. The 57 initiatives ranged from constructing a telescope — the unique matter of the column earlier than [Stong] took it over — to utilizing a bath to check aerodynamics of mannequin airplanes.
X-Rays
[Harry’s] first radiograph. Not unhealthy!Nevertheless, there have been two initiatives that fascinated me and — fortunate for me — I by no means bought even near finishing. One was for constructing an X-ray machine. An newbie named [Harry Simmons] had described his setup complaining that in 23 years he’d by no means met anybody else who had X-rays as a pastime. Oddly, in these days, it wasn’t an issue that the journal printed his house deal with.
You wanted a number of objects. An Oudin coil, type of like a Tesla coil in an autotransformer configuration, generated the mandatory excessive voltage. Actually, it was the Ouidn coil that began the entire thing. [Harry] was utilizing it to energy a UV gentle to check minerals for flourescence. Out of idle curiosity, he changed the UV bulb with an 01 radio tube. These previous tubes had a magnesium coating — a getter — that absorbs stray gasoline left contained in the tube.
The tube glowed in [Harry’s] hand and it reminded him of how an previous gas-filled X-ray tube appeared. He grabbed some movie and was capable of picture screws embedded in a block of wooden.
With 01 tubes onerous to search out, why not blow your individual X-ray tubes?
Nevertheless, 01 tubes have been onerous to get even then. So [Harry], being what we’d now name a hacker, took the plain step of getting a neighborhood glass blower create customized tubes to his specs.
Provided that I lived the place the library barely had any books printed after 1959, it’s no shock that I had no entry to 01 tubes or glass blowers. It wasn’t clear, both, if he was evacuating the tubs or if the glass blower was doing it for him, however the tube was right down to 0.0001 millimeters of mercury.
Why did this curiosity me as a child? I don’t know. For that matter, why does it curiosity me now? I’d construct one at the moment if I had the time. We have now seen a couple of home made X-ray tube initiatives, so it’s doable. However at the moment I’m most likely capable of safely function excessive voltages, excessive vaccums, and protect myself from the X-rays. Most likely. Then once more, perhaps I nonetheless shouldn’t construct this. However at age 10, I undoubtedly would have performed one thing unhealthy to myself or my guardian’s home, if not each.
Then It Will get Worse
The opposite mission I simply couldn’t cease studying about was a “home made atom smasher” developed by [F. B. Lee]. I don’t learn about “atom smasher,” however it was a linear particle accelerators, so I suppose that’s an correct description.
The enterprise a part of the “atom smasher” (doesn’t present all of the vacuum gear).
I doubt I’ve the chops to tug this off at the moment, a lot much less again then. Previous refigerator compressors have been run backwards to tug a tough vaccuum. A home made mercury diffusion pump bought you the remainder of the best way there. I might work with some of these items later in life with scanning electron microscopes and comparable devices, however I used to be shopping for them, not cobbling them collectively from gentle bulbs, refigerators, and home-made blown glass!
You wanted a great way to measure low strain, too, so that you wanted to construct a McLeod gauge filled with mercury. The accelerator itself is three foot lengthy, borosilicate glass tube, two inches in diameter. On the high is a steel globe with a peephole in it to will let you see a neon bulb to evaluate the present within the electron beam. On the backside is a filament.
The globe on the high matches one on high of a Van de Graf generator that creates about 500,000 volts at a comparatively low present. The particle accelerator is decidedly linear however, in fact, all of the cool particle accelerators nowadays type a loop.
[Andres Seltzman] constructed one thing comparable, though not fairly the identical, some years again and you may watch it work within the video under:
What might go fallacious? Excessive vacuum, mercury, excessive voltage, an electron beam and loads of unintentional X-rays. [Lee] mentions the hazard of “water hammers” within the mercury tubes. As well as, [Stong] apparently felt nervous sufficient to get a second opinion from [James Bly] who labored for a corporation known as Excessive Voltage Engineering. He stated, partly:
…we’re considerably involved over the hazards concerned. We agree wholeheartedly together with his feedback in regards to the hazards of glass breakage and the usage of mercury. We really feel strongly, nevertheless, that there’s insufficient dialogue of the potential hazards as a consequence of X-rays and electrons. Regardless that the experimenter restricts himself to targets of low atomic quantity, there’ll inevitably be some technology of high-energy X-rays when utilizing electrons of 200 to .300 kilovolt vitality. If currents as excessive as 20 microamperes are achieved, we’re positive that the resultant hazard is way from negligible. As well as, there can be substantial portions of scattered electrons, a few of which can inevitably cross by the statement peephole.
I Survived
Clearly, I didn’t construct both of those, as a result of I’m nonetheless right here at the moment. I did handle to make an arc furnace from a long-forgotten ebook. Curtain rods held carbon rods from some D-cells. The rods have been in a flower pot filled with sand. An previous energy wire hooked to the curtain rods, though one conductor went by a jar of salt water, making a resistor so that you didn’t blow the fuses.
In some way, I survived with out dying from fumes, blinding myself, or burning myself, however my guardian’s home had a burn mark on the ground for a few years after that experiement.
If you wish to construct an arc furnace, we’d begin with a extra fashionable idea. If you would like a safer previous ebook to learn, strive the one by [Edmund Berkeley], the developer of the Geniac.