12-year-old hardcore boy Jack Oswalt bought materials online to make a home reactor at home to complete the nuclear fusion reaction. A year later, Jack Oswalt wrote in a blog post that a few hours before his 13th birthday, he used his own-built reactor to fusion at home.

Source: Xinmin.com

Recently, a 12-year-old hardcore boy from Tennessee, USA, successfully built the nuclear fusion reactor in his idle room at home.

According to Le Monde, twelve-year-old hardcore boy Jack Oswalt bought materials online to make his own reactor at home to complete the nuclear fusion reaction. Jack Oswalt is a very ordinary teenager. In addition to his love for video games, he is also particularly interested in physics. When he was 11 years old, he started building reactors. When he was about to turn 13, he achieved real nuclear fusion.

A year later, Jack Oswalt wrote in a blog post that a few hours before his 13th birthday he used his own reactor to fusion at home. Fox News also recently reported the boy's story. Everyone was wondering: How did this teenager do it.

From the origin of things

"I have always been a winner in the video game competition, which means nothing to me anymore." Jack Oswalt said, so he turned his interest to scientific research. After

, he devoted a lot of energy to the physical video short films on the Internet, and learned about Taylor Wilson's story.

Taylor Wilson is also a mythological child. He built a working reactor at the age of 14 and became the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion at that time.

Influenced by Taylor Wilson, Jack Oswalt also intends to create his own reactor. He made a list of the parts and equipment he needed. With parental funding, these components were purchased from the Internet, which cost a total of $7,000. Then he began to reorganize the parts and form reactors until they were able to undergo nuclear fusion.

When he was 12 years old, he finally succeeded in creating the first plasma. He first used two metal wires to make an electric cage, and at the same time he drew a vacuum, adding a high voltage of tens of thousands of volts between the two, and then injected positively charged ions, and the electric field would continuously heat these ions to form a high-temperature plasma . The electric field encloses the plasma in the chamber of the reactor so that it does not contact the inner wall. Because once the temperature drops, the reaction will rupture. The particle density in the chamber must also be maintained within a vacuum environment.

Experimental results

After multiple tests, on January 19, 2018, Oswalt, who was still a few hours away from becoming 13 years old, finally succeeded in the experiment.

He injected a small amount of hydrogen into the core of the device. Finally, the instrument detected two neutrons , which means that at least two deuterium atoms nuclei successfully fusion .

We all know that nuclear reaction is mainly divided into nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Nuclear fission is the principle used by ordinary atomic bomb and now nuclear power plants. It emits energy from fission of uranium or plutonium. Nuclear fusion is a reaction of extremely light elements, such as the isotope of hydrogen, deuterium and tritium, and the nucleus are polymerized under ultra-high temperature and high pressure, and emit energy.

He put his nuclear fusion reactor on the Fusor forum, which carefully reviewed Oswalt's experimental report and finally admitted that the 12-year-old boy successfully built a nuclear fusion reactor and gave a high evaluation: "You are amazing, designed a great device!"

However, Oswalt was not satisfied with this reactor: "It is just a concept and does not have commercial value. I consume much more electricity than fusion produces, so I can't become a billionaire by relying on it."