DEMONSTRATION FUSION REACTOR (FUSOR)

DEMONSTRATION FUSION REACTOR (FUSOR)

I've finally gotten the purple plasma glow in my demo fusor!

I cannot resize or move images around so this post will stay ugly for a while [updates later] but there is a good reason: the pictures hosted here are linked to my (now successful) application for entry into the Plasma Club at fusor.net!

Here are most of the components of my demo fusor.

Shown above are:

Pyrex glass laboratory drain pipe "vee" mitered elbow fitting used as my vacuum chamber.

One opening is 3" inside diameter and the other is 2" inside diameter.

I bought it on eBay for $14.99 plus $11.99 shipping for a total of $26.98

Variac brand variable transformer for varying the ac input to the power supply.

This is the 5 amp 500VA version. SC-5M. My power source is 5000v at 18 milliamps, so 5000 x 0.018mA = 89 watts which is basically 89VA. The 5 amp Variac is obviously capable of handling the 18mA. On the faceplate of the Variac it states a maximum of 500VA which again is way more than my 89VA power supply needs. Amazon $81.24

Cenco 5000v AC output spectrum tube power supply. Cenco model #87208

Came with a 3 prong cord. No ground fault interrupter to cause problems. I tested it by making a Jacob's Ladder with it and it didn't explode. It came with 2 unattached wires that a little research showed were for an on/off foot switch. I just connected these wires to each other and tucked them inside the unit.

Antique Shop $4. 

Silicone (clear) covered high voltage wiring rated at around 6 times my voltage and amps.

This wire is limp like a wet noodle, some people call it "noodle wire". This wire is capable of handling 44,000 Volts AC and 31,000 Volts DC. Way more than my 5000 Volts. It can also handle up to 11 Amps. Again, way more than my 0.018 Amps. Always check Volts & Amps! I bought 10 feet. McMaster-Carr 962T15 $20.80

Silicone Rubber Stopper. 2 13/64" for the 2" hole. Purple. 

NASA has a free off gassing website showing which materials lose more weight after being subjected to a vacuum. Nitrile loses over 1% of its weight in a vacuum: meaning 1% of it flies out into the vacuum chamber and ruins your level of vacuum. Silicone only outgasses 0.31%, so it's way better! In a deep vacuum even the oils from a fingerprint outgas and mess with the vacuum levels. NASA outgas list:
https://outgassing.nasa.gov/cgi/uncgi/search/search.sh
McMaster-Carr 922K79 $5.34

Silicone Rubber Stopper. 3 35/64" for the 3" hole. Red.

McMaster-Carr 9277K71 $16.81

Stainless steel wire 302 steel. 35 feet (1/4lb). Bend and Stay. (0.051" diameter).

Used to make the inner and outer grids. This didn't work as well as some thin scrap copper I found, but didn't melt.

McMaster-Carr 8860K16 $6.51

Alumina Aluminum oxide ceramic rods with two 0.063" inner diameter holes.

It was 2 feet long and impossible to cut with a variety of cutting wheels. I eventually just clamped it in a vise and tapped it with a hammer to break pieces off.

Amazon $11.20

Laboratory stand for assembly, but not actual use. Cast iron base.

Amazon $14.67

Eisco 90mm Lab Clamp.

Super nice clamp that was the only one I found that could hold my huge vacuum chamber.

Amazon $14.20

A 3 CFM 22.5 micron Philadelphia brand vacuum pump.

It sprays out a fine smokey mist, but that mist doesn't seem oily and dissipates. A while later the pump starts leaking oil. This is all considered normal. The pump wasn't too loud either.

It came with slightly more than enough vacuum oil needed.

Harbor Freight with a 20% off coupon and shipping for $143.08

Valve manifold fitting consisting of two ball valves. 

One valve seals the vacuum chamber, the other allows the vacuum pump be routed to open air seconds after it is shut off. Without this valve vacuum pumps would spit oil and condensation into the vacuum vessel. This happened once to me when I forget to let the pump up to air.

Free gift from my father!

Pipe Thread Compound with Teflon

Used by plumbers (and me) instead of Teflon pipe tape. Never use tape on vacuum fittings. This is a liquid paste made by PlumbShop #PS2434.

Local hardware store $1.98

Safety full face mask (probably the most important item of all).

Got it free from my father.

Not shown: a free mini desk fan to cool down the vacuum pump which got incredibly hot, misted and smoked and wept oil, but did the job! I bought some other components but didn't need them. I used a vise, wire cutters, hammer and drill press (to make a hole in the 2" rubber stopper). I also used the lab stand and clamp to hold the glass vessel while I assembled everything-it really helped.

So? What's a fusor? It is an Inertial Electrostatic Confinement (IEC) device.  This is a demonstration fusor; but if I added deuterium gas it would fuse hydrogen atoms together and produce neutrons and x-rays. With the gas it was just creating plasma from residual air molecules in the chamber. As a safer demo model it still produces: UV light; an implosion risk in the glass vacuum chamber; and a whole lot of opportunities to accidentally touch 5000 Volts.

This is a Farnsworth type fusor: developed by Philo T. Farnsworth. You know him right? He was the man (child) who invented television sets at age 14. Yeah, that guy!

I left the chamber under vacuum for 12 hours and when I returned it was still holding the vacuum and was able to create purple plasma!

So what is plasma? It's the fourth state of matter, besides gas, liquid and solid. When a gas is at very high temperature (or energy level) electrons start tearing away and leave behind positive ions. Every Volt an ion crosses imparts 11,604 kelvins. 5000V x 11,604 equals about 58 Million kelvin! While the 2" downward facing section of the glass chamber stayed perfectly room temperature, the 3" business end was hot to the touch. While this 58 Million kelvin is hotter than the surface of the sun, the density of the ions is low: thus I didn't melt the glass.



This is a working schematic of my fusor: 

Here is my fusor with pretty much everything shown for operation. The only thing not pictured is the red Variac transformer which acts as a dimmer switch for the AC electricity input.

Variac transformer showing the important info: it can handle 500VA (which is close enough to 500 Watts). And it can handle 5 Amps. My power supply was only 0.018A x 5000V = 89VA which is close to 89 Watts.

This is my nicest stainless steel inner and outer grids. They got me purple plasma, but didn't operate quite as well as the thin copper.

A "manifold" free from my father. It's two ball valves and some pipes and a huge 3/4" hose barb that I jammed into the purple silicone rubber stopper.

Purple plasma! Electrons being stripped off creating positive ionization.

Yes, it looked this wild and purple in real life!

Full face shield that protects your face and neck, in addition to your precious eyes! These are less than $20 on Amazon with free Prime shipping. Plenty to choose from. No excuse not to use one!

My thinnest grid: I tried thin copper instead of stainless steel. The result was way better, but as you can see the spherical grid sort of melted into a blob.

Big things come from small beginnings. 

How to Fix Linux Printing Problem

How to Fix Linux Printing Problem

When printing in Linux do you get a zillion blank pages or tons of pages with lines of weird nonsense across the top? Does this happen especially with Word documents that have images inserted in them and PDF files?


The fix is totally easy:


1. Go to Menu > All Programs > Printers.

2. Right click on your Printer and select Properties.

3. In Printer Properties select Printer Options.

4. Change "Print Quality" to something other than what is already selected.

5. Click Apply.

6. Click OK.

That's it! You don't even have to reboot to printer or computer.

My printer was set to "Normal Greyscale" so I changed it to "Normal" and all of a sudden everything worked fine.

Most printers have a bunch of settings to choose from.

For what it's worth I have an 8 year old Dell Inspiron with an ancient black and white Dell 1700 printer that makes the lights in the room dim every thirty seconds whenever it's turned on.

My printer driver is just the "Generic PCL 6/PCL XL Printer Foomatic" generic driver.

I needed to get a bunch of stuff printed for a job interview: nothing but hieroglyphics were coming out of the printer. A text-filled Word document printed fine, but when I pasted in a photo of my degree and transcripts I got 20 pages of garbage printed out. The same when I tried to print a PDF of my last pay stub. I got sick of jumping from computer to computer and rebooting into Windows Vista (one of my desktops if dual boot).

Some people have to try a few different print quality settings before they find one that works. I lucked out on my first try.

Hope this helps, pass it along!

Settings Doesn't Work In Windows? Here's the Fix!

Settings Doesn't Work In Windows? Here's the Fix!

In Windows 10 there is a message notification center button in the lower right corner:

If there is a certain type of file corruption, when you click on this button to open the notification center and then click "settings" the settings window opens for a split second and then closes. In many other places clicking on "settings" gives the same result.

Microsoft's answer is unhelpful as it involves "going into settings" which you cannot do, obviously. Updates do nothing either. Here is what finally worked. It's easy to do, even if you've never used command lines in Windows before. As always set a backup/restore point before doing anything.

Here's what you do to get settings to work:

1. Click on the Desktop of your computer. This gets you out of any programs. Shut down any running programs. This fix will involve rebooting a couple times.

2. Click CTRL + ALT + DELETE to bring up the task manager. There a around a dozen different ways to bring up the task manager.

3. In task manager choose:  file > run new task.

4. In the window that pops up CHECK the "Run as administrator box". 

5. Type  cmd  into the box labeled "open". This will open up the command line option. If you choose to bring up the command line in a different way (and there are many, many ways to bring it up), make sure to choose to open or run it as administrator. None of this works if you're not running as administrator!

6. Click "OK" and a black window with 1980s style computer type will open up. This is the command prompt. We're going to type some SIMPLE codes to fix your computer in here. It is very important to type EXACTLY including any weird spacing in the simple code or else it won't work.

7. Type  sfc/scannow

8. Sit there and do nothing, even if it looks like your computer is doing nothing. This operation scans and FIXES problems. Don't touch anything. It may take 15 minutes or more.

9. Your computer may reboot itself a couple times or prompt you to ok the reboot. Go ahead and let it reboot. At some point sfc/scannow will finish and probably say "Found problems but could not fix all of them" or something like that. Cool.

10. If a reboot left you back at your desktop, do steps 1-6 again to get back to the black prompt window as an administrator.

11. In the black prompt window type this last code:  DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth    You will notice each part has a SPACE before each / mark. Pay attention to what is capitalized and what isn't. You have to be EXACT!

12. It will start scanning and seem to GET STUCK AT 20%. This is normal. It gets stuck at 20% and again at 40% for like 5 minutes. Do nothing! Just wait! This will take a long time.

13. Your computer may reboot. Let it.

14. After rebooting one of our computers did a HUGE Microsoft update that took 45 minutes, but afterward clicking on "settings" worked and brought up the settings window! Nice.

15. Enjoy all the settings you can customize now (like turning off all those annoying notification center and upgrade Office popups)!



This fix worked after all the other fixes failed me. Microsoft's solution (still on their website as of 6-15-2016) says to go into settings...which is impossible. Another MS solution involves downloading and forcing a security patch from 2015 to load. Obviously your computer already has that.

Another failed fix involves going into user settings (again: impossible) and deleting yourself as a user and making a new user (both impossible because settings doesn't work and those options are greyed out). Downloading various things with names like "K0934834" did nothing, and may get you a nice virus.


Before doing the above you should do a few things: set a system restore point/backup. Search around the web for "windows 10 settings dism" and "windows 10 settings sfc" which will give you other ways to do the same thing (bring up command prompt as admin, run sfc and dism to fix, not just scan problems).

This process takes about 2 hours, but only about 3 minutes of typing slowing and clicking. You can go drink a RedBull and watch TV while the computer does the actual scans and repairs.


If this bricks your computer it's your problem, not mine. Be careful! This did fix a brand new Windows 10 running Dell that arrived non-functional (in terms of settings) from the factory. The user was amazed at all the settings available afterward!

I helped by meowing incessantly.

Eddy Current Anti-Gravity

Eddy Current Anti-Gravity

The electromagnetic force: magnets induce electricity, electricity induces magnetic fields.

As the magnet falls through the copper pipe (since magnets won't stick to copper but the copper will carry electricity) it creates an electric field which creates magnetic forces which swirl (eddy) around and slow the magnet down.

This is how a shake up flashlight works (along with a battery h to store the created electricity).

The magnet also tends to not touch the pipe as it goes down. It just slow motion tumbles.

This is the same look that satellites have rolling in orbit.

Here's a (not) perpetual motion machine: a magnet pendulum. Adding more magnets on the top and underside of my glass chair increases the swing time:

With slightly larger rare earth neodymium magnets the time on motion nears half an hour! A smoother, flatter piece of glass decreases the friction and also increases swing time.

Inverse Square Law

Inverse Square Law 

Similar to my post "Galileo Galilei Square Cube Law" is this quick entry will deal with a simple law: the Inverse Square Law. 

The Inverse Square Law states that energy measured from twice as far is spread over four times the area, and so on. The farther away from a point source of energy, the less its intensity. 

I = 1/Distance²

I = Intensity 

Distance = the radius of an imagined sphere around the point source

As you can see in my drawing, every arrow is one unit of distance. Square the unit and divide into one and you get the area. For example:

2 Distance² = 4

3 Distance² = 9

  4 Distance² = 16

This is similar to Galileo's Square Cube Law: if you take a cube and dice it into smaller cubes: the total volume stays the same, but the surface area keeps growing the more cubes you dice. The Inverse Square Law is definitely more intuitive.

With radiation, the farther away you are-the safer you are. Gravitational fields lessen in intensity. The same with electromagnetic fields.

My intensity never diminishes...unless there's catnip around.

Jacob's Ladder

Jacob's Ladder

The earlier Jacob's Ladder I made was a wooden folding toy; this is the more famous electric one. They have nothing to do with each other.

My Jacob's Ladder does what people told me couldn't be done: I obtained over two feet of travel, with a nice spark using a neon sign power supply that "only" puts out 5000 volts (5kv). Also, no Gabriel Circuit on it. I did add a tiny twist of copper wire at the bottom of one of the rods just for kicks though. 

My unit is a used $4 Cenco 87208 5000v spectrum tube power supply. It was originally used to power various tubes for spectrometer testing. I actually got a free heart defibrillator testing machine with it to. All for less than five bucks!

For another $5 I got a spectrum tube for it!

I got this as a cheap $5.00 add-on amazon prime item!I hooked it to the Cenco power supply. It glows purplish and is awesome! The instructions that came with it say 5000v at around 10mA is good. You should only run it for about 30 seconds!I misplaced my tube holders that came with my power supply so I just soldered two wires to the end caps.I used a variac to supply power to the cenco power supply and the tube lights up at around 3-5 out of 10 on the variac knob. I had to be extremely careful unwrapping it: the instructions are wrapped around the tube and there is a glass nipple-spike sticking out the side that is super easy to break! Also, the center section is very thin and can break when you're pushing it into a tube holder fitting.

And here is the sherbet-orange helium tube I also got.

Here it is hooked up to my huge voltage divider (so it doesn't melt my multimeter). The deal was even better: it's putting out 6000 volts! There were two cords: wall plug and a remote power switch. I cut off the remote switch wires and closed the hole in the wiring by just joining two wires together.

This is a wire frame for holding folders in a file cabinet. I had two.

Now they're the rods for my Jacob's Ladder!

Here's the whole simple setup: direct attachment of the rods: no dangerous wires to melt. I kept adjusting and straightening the rods using the safe high voltage method: unplug the power supply and always have the plug in my left hand behind my back while working on the device.

Some devices have capacitors in them that can store deadly electrical charges for months, even after you unplug them! This unit doesn't (I looked). I also powered it up repeatedly and watched the voltage fall on shutdown: very quick, thus a few seconds after shutdown it's dead. Although the rods can get really hot from the spark.

Here's the transformer: only 5000 volts, which is enough for a Jacob's Ladder. The sound of even this low power, yet still lethal, transformer induced a fascinating noise that suits sounds like musical wind chimes.

Thinner rods might vibrate more and create louder "music" along with the stereotypical monster movie zapping noises.

The hardest part of this project was working up the courage to s flip the power switch on.

It was so scary we forgot to turn the camera sideways! Meow!

So You Want To See Alpha Particles With Your Eyes PART 5

So You Want To See Alpha Particles With Your Eyes PART 5

Visually, this is the most boring way to see alpha particles (or their impact on the physical world at least) in my series. It's also the easiest and cheapest. Unlike my previous 4 posts on this subject, there will be no need for: high voltage; dry ice; Geiger-Mueller tubes or even simple phosphors slopped onto a glass slide.

Nope! All this project takes is any old cheap webcam-and source of alpha radiation. You'll also need a desktop computer to run the webcam with, and a couple screwdrivers.

At my local Disabled American Vets resale shop (kind of like the Salvation Army shops) they have a big box of webcams for .99 cents each! In previous posts I pried the IR filter off of one to make an infrared camera. This time we're prying off the lens in addition to the IR filter.

The steps were simple: take out the screws of the casing. Rip off the lens bezel. Unscrew the lens completely out.

Here's where webcams differ: some have the IR filter as the last part of the lens: the end that is normally inside the camera. Hold the lens at different angles and if you can see green/red coatings that's probably the IR filter. If not, there will be a teeny-tiny little greenish piece of glass inside the camera that used to nearly touch the inside end of the camera. Anytime I've ever taken a webcam apart this filter has always just fell out for me. Sometimes you'll have to pry it out.

Next, all you do is set it up in a dark container and lay an alpha particle source onto the CCD chip of the camera: BOOM! You'll get little white and blue dots zinging all over. Lift off the alpha source and no more moving spots or specs.

I experimented many times, placing and removing the alpha radiation source and starting at my computer screen. The dots disappear when the alpha source is removed. A couple times they did not come back--it turns out I had the alpha source (I have many) flipped around the wrong way: flip it face down onto the CCD and the moving dots returned.

Here's a video showing radiation on and off: I edited down, but the results were the same for dozens of tests: radiation shows up as white and blue dots zinging around. Removing the radiation results in no dots. Placing radiation sources upside down showed no-greatly reduced amounts of dots.

The results are similar to my alpha sphinthariscope only I don't have to wait 10 minutes for my eyes to adjust to darkness-and I don't have to shove my eye inches away from a pile of radioactive material! Let the webcam get blasted in the face with radiation.

The mesmorizing waves of dots and dashes looks like the surface of a lake at night during a full moon in the sphinthariscope, in my webcam alpha particle detector it's more hit or miss. The moon reflected in a small puddle.

The webcam's CCD is way more high-tech than the sphinthariscope though.

CCD stands for "Charge-Coupled Device" and are the sensor that "sees" in many webcams. These pure silicon dioxide is used to change photos to electrons. Light to digital information. Many times these are "doped" with other chemicals to give the silicon dioxide a better affinity for certain inputs. There are different types of dopants, but webcams use "P" dope, which can use our friends from the last post: indium and gallium! Those two help snatch infrared light.

In my last post I mentioned the super lattice of eutectic alloys. There is a similar theory in CCDs where the crystal lattice is missing a component and this empty spot grabs electrons and helps move them around over and over again as a charge carrier. The 'hole' moves all around as the electrons keep moving to file the hole, which leaves a new hole.

This is actually the function of MOSFET and MOS transisistors: like a quantum bug-zapper waiting for photons. Then they carry this info down to the actually CCD which just digitizes this information. So really, the MOSFETs do the interesting work of "seeing".

OK hole, slide me toward the CCD!

A couple more times and then the Meowfet will dump it's charge to the CCD and then it's sent to a pixel! 

Ouch! Crammed into a dead pixel square again.