Comments on: Atom Smasher Made from Spare Parts (Jun, 1940)

By: Myles Rempel

Myles Rempel — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:20:35 +0000

I like the first line “spare parts collected from the physics lab.” Sort of like collecting “loose change” from a bank vault.

By: Firebrand38

Firebrand38 — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 16:56:23 +0000

I hate to break it to you, but they were initially used in particle physics as (for lack of a better term) “atom smashers”

See http://amasci.com/emotor/vdgdesc.html#good

Van de Graaf’s original generator was used for this purpose
http://www.mos.org/sln/toe/construction.html

So it’s no longer used that way, but it was an “atom smasher” when properly set up.

By: glindsey

glindsey — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 15:00:59 +0000

I love how they use “atom smasher” to make it sound like they’re performing fission, when we’re actually talking about a Van De Graff generator doing nothing more than stripping atoms of electrons to create a static charge.