Build your own Cyclotron
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.
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...
Posted by DaveH at November 19, 2004 11:50 PM