Particle Accelerator

ATCG

I was wondering how to build a particle accelerator at home. If it is possible, please tell me how. Thank You
-ATCG

jcsd

No it isn't, partricle accelrators are huge devices which are miles long/have a radius of miles and use extremely powerful magnets in order to get the particles up to the required speed.

Nereid

Actually, you probably have several in your house right now ... your computer monitor (unless it's a liquid crystal flat screen), your TV set (again, unless it's a flat panel liquid crystal one), your fluorescent light tubes, ...

The standard cathode ray tube is an electron accelerator (and electrons are particles).

What sort of particles do you wish to accelerate? To what sorts of energies?

chroot

You can build a small cyclotron in your home with nothing more than a modest vacuum pump, some sort of cylindrical vacuum flask, a couple of carefully manufacturered D-shaped electrodes, and some simple electronics. The whole thing could be no larger than a few feet in diameter.

The easiest thing to do is to evacuate the flask and use the particles (mostly nitrogen atoms) in the rarefied gas left over as projectiles.

The energies won't be high, but you can certainly do some simple experiments with your crude nitrogen beam.

- Warren

ATCG

I would be trying to create anti-matter

jcsd

What kind of anti-matter, you can create anti-neutrinos from beta-decay (In the UK at least you usually need a license to handle any radioactive materials), creating any other kind of antimatter is going to be more difficult esp. anti-baryons.

Nereid

You could always build a cloud chamber, and watch the cosmic rays go through it. Every so often you'll see some anti-matter ...

russ_watters

Your warp engines running low on gas?

I read once that anti-matter is th most expensive "substance" in the world.

Nereid

Russ said:More likely to be super-heavy elements (Lr, Rf, ... through to Uuo (element 118))

chroot

Given the energies needed to perform this, I can pretty convincingly say you're not going to get it to happen on your tabletop. And even if you did, how would you use it? You need some pretty sophisticated machinery to separate and store antimatter.

You may be interested to know that some kinds of targets, such as lead, are commonly used to "convert" photons into particle-antiparticle pairs.

- Warren

pmb

That's incorrect. People have actually built particle accelerators at home. From - http://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/qu...icle_accl.html
I believe he's talking about this person
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrniell/cyc2.html


A good place to start would be to look at how the first cyclotron was made. See - "The Production of High Speed Light Ions Without the Use of High Voltages," Ernest O. Lawrence and M. Stanley Livingston, University of California. February 1932 --
http://prola.aps.org/abstract/PR/v40/i1/p19_1

For an image of a table-top accelerator see
http://www.aip.org/history/lawrence/...e/first-11.htm

See also -
http://www.aip.org/history/lawrence/first_text.htm
http://www.aps.org/apsnews/0603/060316.html
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/...rly-years.html
http://www.lbl.gov/nsd/user88/chchist1.html (???)

The first cyclotron could actually be held in your hand
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/timeline/15.html
http://www.llnl.gov/llnl/history/eolawrence.html
http://science.howstuffworks.com/atom-smasher2.htm

ATCG - If you build one please keep me informed. I'd love to follow your progress.

Pete

chroot

[8)] [8)] [8)] [8)] [8)] [8)]

THAT'S CYCLOTRON BOY!

I remember seeing his (award-winning) science fair project at the 1994 International Science and Engineering Fair in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada!!! My clique of students took quickly to giving him the endearing name of 'cyclotron boy,' and making up stories about his parents forcing him to stay in the basement, subsisting on bread and water, working his fingers to the bone to make his cyclotron.

Talk about a small world!

My only complaint with his entire experiment was that he obfuscated it as much as possible. He didn't just buy a vacuum pump -- no -- he took one apart and stuck all its components on a big piece of plywood, lengthening hoses as necessary, to make it look more imposing. He really did a first-rate job, though -- he was studying mass resonance, I believe, and took some reasonably useful data with his crude apparatus. He certainly did deserve the 1st grand award in physics.

- Warren

ATCG

Could someone link me to a web site the has detailed schematics on how to build a cyclotron or Particle accelerator?

Thanks
-ATCG

pmb

Did you look at this page??
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mrniell/cyc2.html

Try e-mailing the author/owner of that site and ask him of the blueprints and schematics (one's online are not very legible).

His e-mail address is - mrniell@umich.edu

Pete

bdrell

This summer I worked with a Van de Graaff accelerator. We were able to accelerate protons and alpha particles to 2.5 MeV. Basically, it's just a Van de Graaff generator that charges up to about 2x10^6 V and accelerates the particles from a plasma that gets struck by an RF magnetic field. They go through a bunch of equipotential plates, basically round metal plates with holes in their middles that are connected by resistors so that they step down the voltage accumulated on the dome. To keep the dome from sparking over to the outer container, it's pumped down, then filled to low pressure with SF_6. There's a relatively long beam line that's pumped down to high vacuum with a sample chamber. We did some Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry and some nuclear reaction analysis.

There are also some smaller accelerators. At the University of North Texas, where I was this summer, they have a Cockcroft-Walton accelerator. This one's small enough that it could fit in a relatively large basement. Good luck with the electric bills, though. Accelerators eat power pretty ravenously.

[:))] Just my 2 cents.

SmarterThanGod

Can you go into more detail as to materials, production and use? Id appreciate it. Im interested in designing one myself, bu i need more general info

eagleone

So what would you do with just a cyclotron (assuming you’ll build it, and you’ll willing to pay electrical bill for it’s el. Magnets, nevertheless Lawrence would be proud on you ;))? You need some detecting equipment, what about that, and what can you really do with homemade cyclotron (you can’t achieve energies needed for experiments you would like to conduct anyway)…

Thing with that cloud chamber could be interesting… has anyone of you built it or saw homemade specimen (at least you’ll pass without scary el. bills)…

Anyway I’m interested what effects are being used for detections of processes, experiments, globally everything happening in modern hi-energies accelerators?