Recent content by dbooksta

The Lawson criterion suggests that a chain fusion reaction will only occur in a confined plasma. Since it's a product of temperature and pressure (or density) a chain reaction would be virtually impossible in a cold target at pressures attainable in a lab. Likewise, the Coulomb barrier makes it...

Yes, it's essentially a piston fired by combustion of various volatile fuels. Right now it's configured with an essentially direct-vent exhaust. A coil spring will suffice to measure peak force since it's easy to mark peak compression, but firing the engine occurs in milliseconds so I would...

Ah ha ... I guess what I really want to measure is momentum impulse, not work. The engine does not necessarily create motion on the piston end if the piston is stuck against a large mass. So this is actually more like a rocket. So how can I accurately measure impulse if the force is on the...

Searching for pressure transducers is only turning up industrial probes that themselves cost hundreds of dollars, and that's before finding or building an electronic system to record the data at the sub-millisecond frequency I would need in order to calculate the integral of pressure over time...

I'm tinkering with a simple heat engine and I want to experimentally measure its work output. The engine pushes a piston once per test, and I know the work done is on the order of 1 kilojoule. The problem is that the engine does the work on the order of milliseconds, but depending on the...