Build your own Cyclotron

| 2 Comments
When I was growing up, my Dad did Physics at The University of Pittsburgh. I am a bit pissed at the fact that they have seemed to have dropped the ball on big science and that their very large Physics department seems to have morphed into a generic (and weak) "Physics & Astronomy Department" Anyway, the image below is from 1964 or 1965 and is not representative of the Cyclotron that Alex Allen built -- this puppy was built by High Voltage Engineering Corporation from Burlington, Massachusetts. vandegraaf.jpg What prompted this rant is that someone built their own 12" Cyclotron with a definitely non-shabby 1MEv beam power out of pocket change and good hacking skills... From Physics Today: bq. Building a Cyclotron on a Shoestring Starting when he was an undergrad, Tim Koeth built a 12−inch cyclotron. Now he is in grad school and his creation is used in a senior−level lab class. bq. I was immediately obsessed," says Timothy Koeth, who, as a sophomore in physics in 1995 at Rutgers University, got the bug to build a cyclotron. "I was sitting in Tom Devlin's modern physics lecture," recalls Koeth. "He described the principle of the cyclotron. He said it required a lot of RF power. I was�and am�a ham radio operator, so RF was no problem. It needed a big magnet; I knew I could find one of those. How tough could a vacuum system and chamber be?" Some six years later, Koeth's 12−inch machine became part of an undergraduate lab course. Heh... This is hacking -- old school... cyclotron.jpg

2 Comments

Hi Reece

Couple of things...

#1. - Using atmosphere as a fuel source:

A cyclotron is a very highly tuned system which balances the mass of the ions being injected with the overall magnetic field and the acceleration potential and frequency. What is right for one atomic mass will fail to accelerate something lighter and will leave skid marks on the outside walls for anything heavier.

#2. - Using atmosphere as a fuel source:

This makes me think that you want to use the cyclotron in the atmosphere as part of the lift from Earth to Orbit. If you look at the literature for ion drives (these are widely used), the available thrust is measured in ounces at most. They are awesome for doing minor orbital corrections for geosync satellites but for heavy lifting, forget it. For the sake of discussion, if you _were_ able to develop enough thrust to lift a spacecraft, your beam would render the ground underneath highly radioactive and sterile for several tens of miles. Greenpeace would not be amused...

#3. - Why a cyclotron:

The commercial ion engines work just fine without hauling a 2.5 ton magnet into space __plus__ the power source to run the magnet and the RF oscillators. An Ion Engine just uses a nice dense gas (Xenon is used a lot) and an acceleration potential of about 15KV. This works fine so the additional complexity (and mass) of the cyclotron is of no benefit. Literally. Cyclotrons are cool but they are not a cure for this question.

Here are three links:

Boeing for their Xenon Ion Engines
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bss/factsheets/xips/xips.html

The Space Daily article on the European SMART-1 Spacecraft which uses an Ion Engine
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/lunar-04i.html

And finally, the Google search which turned up these two links as well as over 20,000 others for your research fun!
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ion+engine+satellite+orbit+correction

Take care and welcome to my little corner of the net...

HI!

My name is Reece Love and I am a Aeronautical Engineering student at Embry-Riddle Aeronautics University in Prescott Arizona. I am interested in building a cyclotron for space propulsion purposes. It would need to be small, as I would like to build a working model of the engine. The cyclotron would use any atmosphere as a fuel source to power the cyclotron. What do you suggest?

October 2022

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

Environment and Climate
AccuWeather
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Climate Depot
Ice Age Now
ICECAP
Jennifer Marohasy
Solar Cycle 24
Space Weather
Watts Up With That?


Science and Medicine
Junk Science
Life in the Fast Lane
Luboš Motl
Medgadget
Next Big Future
PhysOrg.com


Geek Stuff
Ars Technica
Boing Boing
Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
FAIL Blog
Hack a Day
Kevin Kelly - Cool Tools
Neatorama
Slashdot: News for nerds
The Register
The Daily WTF


Comics
Achewood
The Argyle Sweater
Chip Bok
Broadside Cartoons
Day by Day
Dilbert
Medium Large
Michael Ramirez
Prickly City
Tundra
User Friendly
Vexarr
What The Duck
Wondermark
xkcd


NO WAI! WTF?¿?¿
Awkward Family Photos
Cake Wrecks
Not Always Right
Sober in a Nightclub
You Drive What?


Business and Economics
The Austrian Economists
Carpe Diem
Coyote Blog


Photography and Art
Digital Photography Review
DIYPhotography
James Gurney
Joe McNally's Blog
PetaPixel
photo.net
Shorpy
Strobist
The Online Photographer


Blogrolling
A Western Heart
AMCGLTD.COM
American Digest
The AnarchAngel
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Babalu Blog
Belmont Club
Bayou Renaissance Man
Classical Values
Cobb
Cold Fury
David Limbaugh
Defense Technology
Doug Ross @ Journal
Grouchy Old Cripple
Instapundit
iowahawk
Irons in the Fire
James Lileks
Lowering the Bar
Maggie's Farm
Marginal Revolution
Michael J. Totten
Mostly Cajun
Neanderpundit
neo-neocon
Power Line
ProfessorBainbridge.com
Questions and Observations
Rachel Lucas
Roger L. Simon
Samizdata.net
Sense of Events
Sound Politics
The Strata-Sphere
The Smallest Minority
The Volokh Conspiracy
Tim Blair
Velociworld
Weasel Zippers
WILLisms.com
Wizbang


Gone but not Forgotten...
A Coyote at the Dog Show
Bad Eagle
Steven DenBeste
democrats give conservatives indigestion
Allah
BigPictureSmallOffice
Cox and Forkum
The Diplomad
Priorities & Frivolities
Gut Rumbles
Mean Mr. Mustard 2.0
MegaPundit
Masamune
Neptunus Lex
Other Side of Kim
Publicola
Ramblings' Journal
Sgt. Stryker
shining full plate and a good broadsword
A Physicist's Perspective
The Daily Demarche
Wayne's Online Newsletter

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on November 19, 2004 11:50 PM.

Pictures from Iraq... was the previous entry in this blog.

Stocking stuffers for your leftie friends. is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Monthly Archives

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 5.2.9