When I was undergraduate student I asked to my proffesor why nobody has made a synchrotron machine with a superconducting circular wire and magnetic field to accelerate electrons properly and to maintain the relativistic regime. In actual synchrotrons there are several sources that cause loses in bunch focusing, but with a very thin superconducting wire I think it is possible to make a tabletop synchrotron because it has no loses, ohmnic resistance is zero. What is the practial impediment to fabricate such a synchrotron?
Asked
Active
Viewed 343 times
1 Answers
2
Back In The Day, Scientific American was an amazing magazine - The best place in the world for a high school student to learn about science. Two of the best things about it were the Mathematical Games and Amateur Scientist columns. They were incredible, in the literal sense of unbelievably good.
Amateur Scientist was at its best when C. L. Stong was editor, from 1952 - 1978. This is the Amateur Scientist column from September, 1953.
I found the entire collection of C. L. Stong's articles online here. See Cyclotron in the table of contents.
OK, it doesn't use superconducting wire, but it is definitely a tabletop project. He even tells you how to build the vacuum pump. See this for difference between a cyclotron and a synchrotron.
mmesser314
- 49,702