Via Michael, check out this article about a high school kid who built a machine capable of producing nuclear fusion. Pretty cool stuff. And pretty abysmal reporting:
Thiago Olson, 17, stands near his nuclear fusion reactor, which he calls “the Fusor,” at home in Oakland Township on Friday.
That’s, um, because it is a Fusor. It’s not like he just made a stencil and spray-painted a cool-sounding name onto his soapbox racer.
Thiago’s mom, Natalice Olson, initially was leery of the project, even though the only real danger from the fusion machine is the high voltage and small amount of X-rays emitted through a glass window in the vacuum chamber — through which Olson videotapes the fusion in action..
Mrs. Olson probably should’ve stuck with her first instinct. From what I’ve read, the voltages and x-rays involved are both excellent ways to kill yourself and your family (I think there’s some danger from neutron radiation, too). But presumably (and hopefully) Thiago learned how to build shielding for the gadget sometime during its construction.
“Originally, he wanted to build a hyperbolic chamber,” she said, adding that she promptly said no. But, when he came asking about the nuclear fusion machine, she relented.
Is that the right quote? Really? Because all I’m turning up on the internet for “hyperbolic chamber” are references to the Hyperbolic Time Chamber from the awesome yet completely uneventful anime Dragonball Z. Honestly, if it was between one of those and a Fusor, I’d have pushed the kid toward the time machine.
I guess it’s a little silly to nitpick. This is a human interest story, not real science reporting, so it’s not that important that Ms. Damron get things right. Still, I don’t really understand why reporters don’t bother to run things by experts — or at least wikipedia — when they’re writing about technical areas in which they’re not conversant. The likelihood of embarrassing errors seems high. So why not call up a physics professor from the local community college and read him or her the piece over the phone? I bet she’d be happy to do it so long as you used a quote from her.
Anyway, questionable coverage aside, this kid is clearly pretty awesome, and he has now officially replaced David Hahn as my all-time favorite teenage nuclear hacker. These kids’ willingness to leapfrog straight into playing with lethal radioactivity is awe-inspiring. I’m still working up toward accidentally killing myself with mains power, for pete’s sake.
Maybe she said Hyperbaric Chamber? Though I’m at a loss as to why that would be more dangerous than a Fusor. Also, this.
Yeah, I wondered about that hyperbolic bit, but being rather less than fluent in physics I decided to let it go.
I still don’t think being a human interest excuses poor reportage.