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Past Shows
December 13,
2003
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Cold Fusion
Heats Up
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Almost fifteen years ago, the world
was taken by storm with an announcement
by two electrochemists. Drs. Stanley
Pons and Martin Fleischmann claimed
to have discovered a way of making
cheap, safe power. But unlike most
scientists, they didn't publish their
results in a scientific journal, instead
they took it directly to the media.
The story of cold fusion had begun.
But cold fusion proved almost impossible
to replicate. Other labs that tried
to copy the original research were
unable to repeat it. The original
research was declared fraudulent and
Pons and Fleischmann left the United
States, their reputations ruined.
Cold fusion was moved to the scientific
back burner.
However, not everyone thought the
original research was a hoax. Pons
and Fleischmann had both been respected
researchers in their field before
their announcement. One of the scientists
who believed in them was Dr. Michael
McKubre. Today he's the director
of the Energy Research Center at Stanford
Research International. He's continued
to pursue cold fusion research and
thinks that within the next two years
he'll have a working cold fusion reactor.
Working along side Dr. McKubre is
Dr. Peter Hagelstein from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He's working out the theory behind
cold fusion. If his model is correct
it will help experimentalists build
better fusion reactors.
Another researcher who believes cold
fusion will work is Dr. Edmund
Storms. A former scientist with
The Los Alamos National Laboratory
in New Mexico, Dr. Storms now maintains
an international database of research
into cold fusion. Today, about a thousand
scientists from seven countries are
trying different ways of generating
power with cold fusion.
Watching all this with scepticism
is Dr. Robert Park, a physicist
from the University of Maryland. He
isn't convinced that cold fusion is
a real phenomenon, and won't be until
we actually see a working cold fusion
generator available.
Related Links
Hot Fusion's
Cold Shower
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ITER
design - picture courtesy of
ITER |
For fifty years the promise of fusion
power generated from hot fusion, the
same thermonuclear reaction that occurs
in the sun, has been fifty years away.
The future of hot fusion is supposed
to be ITER, the International Thermonuclear
Reactor, a multi-billion dollar project
that will build the largest fusion
reactor yet, and finally create a
self-sustaining fusion reaction. The
decision about where ITER is to be
built will be made soon, but the Canadian
bid to host the project has withered
on the vine. Dr. Ronald Parker,
a professor of Electrical and Nuclear
Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology is the former Deputy
Director of the ITER project. He brings
us up to date on fusion research,
ITER, the next fifty years, and whether
Canada's role in ITER is really dead.
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Bombardier Beetles
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Bombadier
beetle - Courtesy of Thomas
Eisner and Daniel Aneshansley,
Cornell University |
The bombardier beetle is a remarkable
animal. When threatened by a predator
it uses an internal explosion to generate
a boiling hot jet of toxic liquid,
which can be discouraging for a hunter
looking for a light snack. While this
is a fascinating mechanism, Dr.
Andy McIntosh, a professor
of thermodynamics and combustion theory
in the Energy and Resources Research
Institute at the University of Leeds
in England, thinks teasing out the
beetle's secrets might be the key
to a whole range of new technologies.
He's particularly interested in using
the beetle's squirting technology
to create a device to relight jet
engines that have gone out.
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Plastics Under
Pressure
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Baroplastics
- Courtesy Dr. Anne Mayes |
Plastic is a miracle material, but
recycling plastics effectively is
a devil of a job. Most plastics need
to be heated and melted to be reprocessed
into new material, but that same heat
is damaging to the plastic, and degrades
it into a less useful material. Dr.
Anne Mayes, a professor
of Materials Science and Engineering
at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, may have a solution to
the problem of recycling plastics.
She’s invented a new plastic that
can be reformed under pressure instead
of heat, and can be recycled over
and over. If it can be produced economically,
it could make for cheaper production
and processing, and much more environmentally
friendly recyclable plastics in the
future.
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Links
Question of
the Week: Physics on a Swing
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Rex Woollard in Ottawa writes,
"When you watch someone on a swing,
you usually see them lean back and
stretch their legs out forward on
the pump stroke. Would it be more
efficient to swing with the legs draped
downward rather than outstretched,
and how does pumping make you go higher
anyway?"
For the answer, we go to the University
of Saskatchewan where Dr. Andrew
Robinson is in the Department
of Physics and Engineering Physics.
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