John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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#90,701
She's loving it. She tried to explain magnetic wakefields to me over Skype the other day and failed. She also 'gets' how a lot of the politics work, and how every development is generally obsolete the day its turned on and proves that, with only a few megadollars more a bigger and better one can be made. Oh and how Engineering always seem to want to use new and untested things mainly because they want to play with them 🙂 . I can see her taking to this as a career.

Scary part is she will be 21 in may. Offspring++ occurs in June.
 
#90,706
billshurv said:
She's loving it. She tried to explain magnetic wakefields to me over Skype the other day and failed.
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I would fail also..... Skype is too complex for me....😱

Wakefields are not exactly everyday common knowledge...other than for accelerator type people..

All we can do is impart all we know, then stand back.

billshurv said:
She also 'gets' how a lot of the politics work, and how every development is generally obsolete the day its turned on and proves that, with only a few megadollars more a bigger and better one can be made. Oh and how Engineering always seem to want to use new and untested things mainly because they want to play with them 🙂 .
Click to expand...

She is correct on several levels..

The big physics projects take 5 to 10, sometimes 15 years to conceptualize, design, prototype, and test...and that's not the final hardware, just the prototype/proof of concept stuff. By the time production can ramp, the engineers have developed better ways to build it, the physicists have modified their theories based on proto results, and external suppliers have developed better materials.. At the start, it would be very dangerous to suddenly modify anything, as the "better" methods are not yet tested out.

That is actually what happened to NASA in the early days. They were run by scientist/physicists type guys who would continue to change the project midstream because there was always a better way. When they switched to engineering types runnin the place, it took off. Primarily because they had the "good enough, finish the job mentality. Was it the best tech? Not necessarily...

Engineers wanting to play with better toys??? Shirley she jests...😉
billshurv said:
I can see her taking to this as a career.
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She has four good advantages...
Female in a male dominated discipline.
Ability to see more than just the science.
Desire and excitement on the knowledge.


and

Parenting..


Wish her luck for me. Oh, and if she has any Q's, tell her you know somebody in low places who may be able to answer...

John
 
#90,707
Will do. I was reading about the Original Daresbury accelerator (NSF) the other day. Apparently they made it too well so can't demolish it without fear of it rolling down the hill and taking out the town. Of course those were the days when 20MV was a lot 🙂
 
#90,708
bkdog, you would still need some other parts to get it up and running. At this size it's only really for mostly lab work. You still need 20-30ft x 20-30ft space. Price would have to be discussed, but would be much less than buying all those parts new. You'd still probably have to buy the gun new at $25-30k, for example. But for any lab/university wanting to save money to make it a reality, well, PM me.
 
#90,709
billshurv said:
Will do. I was reading about the Original Daresbury accelerator (NSF) the other day. Apparently they made it too well so can't demolish it without fear of it rolling down the hill and taking out the town. Of course those were the days when 20MV was a lot 🙂
Click to expand...

Um, today 20 MV is still a lot..😱 I loved the writeup where they initially tested some of the structure using a "DIY home made" 10 MV van de graf.. And, vertical?? What, gravity assist? Ours are horizontal..

I love the "laddertron", what a funny name for the chain used to drag the electrons...

I glanced, so am not sure how they make negative ions, the stripping foils remove electrons, which normally leaves more positive..

The technology used is still amazing, no? They should make it a museum.
They are trying to do that with Tesla's place here, but it looks like it's stalled.

As to demolishing the tower, they need a good lumberjack, they know how to fell a tree in the desired direction..

John
 
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#90,714
jneutron said:
The technology used is still amazing, no? They should make it a museum.
They are trying to do that with Tesla's place here, but it looks like it's stalled.

As to demolishing the tower, they need a good lumberjack, they know how to fell a tree in the desired direction..

John
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It's all amazing. Does make me think I goofed in my career, but I just wasn't stoic enough at 21 to spend 10 years on something only for funding to be cut.

A museum would be good. Must head up there for a visit.
 
#90,716
1audio said:
I would just look at the radiated field with a coil. Its the same energy getting into everything. A small coil or even a wire from tip to ground in a probe is excellent for finding and tuning these issues. No real need for exotic diff preamps.

Sent from my LG-H811 using Tapatalk
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Do you just need a field magnitude detector or you need to see a waveform?

A sensitive hand held field strength detector can be had at FRY's Elec.


-Richard
 
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#90,720
RNMarsh said:
WAY too cold there. I will be indoors and a better Party than hot dogs and beer and rednecks. But, go ahead and use the Houston tickets and we'll compare notes on the Party next week.

-RNM
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Way too fast with the insults there Dick, what for? Just commenting, I would never pay scalper prices for any sporting event or go to Houston for anything but the Rothko Chapel. I would hate to chose between Wayne Newton fans and the average redneck for company.
 

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