"The Amateur Scientist" archive articles are back

Does that include the classics, like the home X-Ray machine? :-) I expect that if SciAm printed that today there would be $zillion law suits flying around. Maybe even with the fairly harmless home linear accelerator.

I remember a dye laser that was *very* dangerous.

Leon

You can buy a CD-ROM which contains the complete run of The Amateur Scientist, as well as The Amateur Astronomer and The Amateur Telescope Maker (from 1928 to 2001!), plus a whole bunch of other stuff.,

I've seen it offered by several online merchants: one is

I know someone that (ages ago) built his own 4MEV pulsed cockroach-walldorf accelerator in his garage. He even reproduced a few of the low energy experiments.

It wasn't a dye laser that was dangerous---it was the Nitrogen UV pumping laser that essentially worked off a huge about foot-square PCB used as a high voltage capacitor. I still have this board somewhere.

is

It's from the Society for Amateur Scientists:

my loving wife bought it for me for my birthday several years ago, but she's very picky what she'll let me build. ;>)

Mark L. Fergerson

I recall reading about the N2 laser years ago, but could never find the details again. Does anyone know a URL for the construction? IIRC it was very simple.

When I was in HS, I saw two seniors trying to build the He-Ne laser. I don't know if they succeeded.

Cheers! Rich

Even a serious try would have been very educational. Glassblowing, vacuums, high voltages, etc.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

I still have the article about the dye laser somewhere. If I remember correctly, it was pumped by a flash tube and the author used rarefied air (i.e. many kilovolts across a tube being evacuated - flashes over when the pressure gets low enough). There are construction details to be found on the web for nitrogen (i.e. atmospheric air) lasers, such as

'Don't peer into output port with remaining eye', etc.

On 'Fifth Gear' shown on 'Dave' in the UK recently they did a piece about devices one can buy that jam police laser speed-measuring guns. The 'technician' fitting the kit to show car mumbled something about early versions using "Class 4" IR lasers that would set fire to the cardboard box if powered in their packing. Does that sound plausible?

Chris

Search for TEA Nitrogen Laser

The fire bit, yes. Whether it would jam detectors is another matter. It could certainly blind anyone looking into the beam.

The kind of device Faraday could have built. How would that have changed history?

is

I got my copy there a few years back on sale for something like $19. The earliests entries don't even have technical info, just what appear to be "news reports" of the growing popularity of the hobby of amateur telescope making, but many of the remainder articles make it well worth the cost. The CD's entries have "ratings" that weren't on the articles, I think recent cost of materials, but especially the dangers involved in the project. Of course, those danger ratings makes it easy to find the most interesting projects...

OK, so go on, tell us: what was the baddest, wickedest project of the lot?

Chrix

Back in the 60's I remember dreaming of building the electron accelerator (which required a Van de Graaf generator to power it). That puppy would generate X-rays up to ~100 keV, which can be quite dangerous. I have no idea what sort of intensities it could achieve, but the fact that a high-school kid would have no idea of their existence, and no way of monitoring them, makes them much more dangerous.

Today I work with accelerators that have well over a million times that energy. But we understand the radiation issues, and monitor them.

To close the loop: in an experiment I am working on, we are preparing an electron gun from an old TV tube, just as in that ancient Amateur Scientist article, for use in generating X-rays to align a diffraction grating. The safety-related paperwork costs far more than the equipment itself....

Tom Roberts