Three Ways to Make a Star on Earth

Massive magnets to confine plasma

This year, construction will begin on the 35-nation megaproject ITER, located in France. A doughnut-shaped, powerplant-size reactor, ITER will contain a fusion reaction within a magnetic ﬁeld and siphon oﬀ energy through its metal walls. Scientists hope to have a test-scale reaction running within the next decade.

A reflective wall in a compact reactor

In Lockheed’s design, a row of magnetic coils create a reﬂective wall to contain the plasma. The company’s small-scale reactor allows scientists to tweak experimental setups more nimbly than they can with a reactor the size of ITER. Lockheed says it has already ﬁred up its reactor 200 times but won’t release any data—so whether those attempts were successful remains to be seen. If they were, well, we may all be driving literal Ford Fusions before long.

A micro-explosion ignited by lasers

At the National Ignition Facility, scientists approach fusion diﬀerently. They ﬁre dozens of lasers at a BB-size bead of solid deuterium and tritium. In a billionth of a second, the hydrogen-based fuel collapses into a dense plasma and bursts into a puﬀ of energy. Last year, scientists produced the ﬁrst-ever net positive fusion reaction, meaning they got slightly more energy out of the plasma than they put in.

Comments

How Energy conversion from coal is done?

Single generator sets of over 600 MW are now used in the UK, though there are many smaller generators in use. A 600 MW generator can supplythe average needs of over 1 million UK households. Three or four such generators are typically installed in a single large coal-fired station which isoften sited close to a coal mine, away from the city dwellers who consume the electricity. Such generators are usually driven by a compound arrangement of highpressure, intermediate-pressure and low-pressure turbines, increasing in size as the pressure decreases. Modern turbines rotate in a speed range from 1500 to 3500 r.p.m., usually 3000 r.p.m. for the UK’s 50 Hz system. For large coal-fired plant the steam pressure could be 25 megapascals (MPa) with steam temperatures of 500–600 °C to improve the thermodynamic efficiency. In nuclear reactors, which operate under less demanding conditions, the steam is superheated to about 5 MPa and 300 °C. Modern water tube boilers are complex and have ...

How Bulletproof glass works?

Shattering the science behind what makes the breakable unbreakable Bullet-resistant glass works by absorbing a bullet’s kinetic (movement) energy and dissipating it across a larger area. Multiple layers of toughened glass are reinforced with alternated layers of polycarbonate – a tough but ﬂ exible transparent plastic which retains the see-through properties of glass. As a bullet strikes the ﬁ rst glass layer, the polycarbonate layer behind it forces the glass to shatter internally rather than outwards. This process absorbs some of the bullet’s kinetic energy. The high velocity impact also ﬂ attens the bullet’s head. Imagine trying to pierce through a sheet of cotton with the top end of a pencil. It would be very difﬁ cult compared to using the sharp pointed end. The same principle applies here. The ﬂ at-headed bullet struggles to penetrate the layer of polycarbonate. As the bullet travels through each layer of glass and polycarbonate, the process is repeated until it no l...

20 Interesting science fact (PART 2)

1/ Astronauts cannot belch - there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs. 2/ The air at the summit of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet is only a third as thick as the air at sea level. 3/ One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang the Universe was the size of a ...pea. 4/ DNA was first discovered in 1869 by Swiss Friedrich Mieschler. 5/ The molecular structure of DNA was first determined by Watson and Crick in 1953. 6/ The first synthetic human chromosome was constructed by US scientists in 1997. 7/ The thermometer was invented in 1607 by Galileo. 8/ Englishman Roger Bacon invented the magnifying glass in 1250. 9/ Alfred Nobel invented dynamite in 1866. 10/ Wilhelm Rontgen won the first Nobel Prize for physics for discovering X-rays in 1895. 11/ The tallest tree ever was an Australian eucalyptus - In 1872 it was measured at 435 feet tall. 12/ Christian Barnard performed the first heart transplant i...

Knowledge N Fact4u

Search This Blog