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Hardware Hacking Build Science

Columbia Holds Wake For Historic Cyclotron 72

Posted by kdawson from the nothing-lasts-forever-mister-bond dept.
Pickens writes "They called it leviathan, behemoth, Big Bertha. At 12 feet wide, rising 7 feet above the cement floor and weighing an estimated 65 tons, the Columbia cyclotron, the particle accelerator built in the late 1930s by Columbia physicist John Dunning, played a crucial role in the dawn of the nuclear era. Dunning's experiments verified fission, established many of its properties, and, most significantly, demonstrated that the rare isotope Uranium 235, and not the more common U-238, was the more fissionable form of the element. 'In a week or two, they will dismantle it, and they will sell it for scrap,' says George Hamawy, Columbia University's director of radiation safety. 'This is the last chance to see it,' Hamawy added as students held a wake and contractors arrived to remove the cyclotron. 'We're going to make two-thousand-pound sections,' said one contractor before taking the cyclotron's measurements. 'We'll start slicing on Monday.'"
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Columbia Holds Wake For Historic Cyclotron More

Columbia Holds Wake For Historic Cyclotron

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  • a piece of history (Score:5, Funny)

    by aleph42 ( 1082389 ) * on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @07:05AM (#22855466)
    A piece of history has never been so heavy.

    • Mod parent down (Score:5, Funny)

      by aleph42 ( 1082389 ) * on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @07:13AM (#22855526)
      Mod parent down; he's unapropriate (think of the Godwin laws!), completly fails to nail that pathetic pun he might have been aiming for ("owning a piece of history..." would have definitly been better), is unfunny, and most of all he STOLE MY FIRST POST!
      • Oops. Forgot to click the [X] Post Anonymously box, huh?

        • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

          by aleph42 ( 1082389 ) *
          I think you missed the joke.

          Anyways, I was assamed of that lame first post, so I tried to make it better with some recursive humor. I guess that will be my "I've got karma to burn" day.

          He, I also removed my sig to see how many people will not notice I made the "mod parent down" post, and mod it down.

          .
          .
          .
          slow day.
          • I was expecting an IT department joke, saying something along the lines of the contractors beating the IT students and faculty at being the first to hack their cyclotron.

            Or maybe a force joke, talking about how a portion of its magnet would be an attractive momento.
          • To the guy who modded the parent as troll:

            Congrat, you've one upped me in reccursiv humor! Seriously, that was really funny. Now it's up to the meta-mods to sort our mess ;)

  • Deeznutz! (Score:2, Informative)

    by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 )
    With a little elbow grease, you can build a cyclotron at home. The concept is pretty simple. Two D-shaped conductors separated by a short gap.

    Reviled editor michael reported on it back in 2002.
    http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/20/1626204&tid=134&tid=14 [slashdot.org]

    Definitely worth trying out once.
    Once.
  • Givin it's importance in the development of nuclear science, it might be nice to preserve it somehow I would think...

    • Re:Can it not be preserved? (Score:5, Informative)

      by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <hobbes.xmsnet@nl> on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @07:28AM (#22855624)
      Some of its parts have been sent to the Smithsonian years ago. All that's left is the magnet.
    • Could one consider those early devices for electromagnetic enrichment of uranium to be cyclotrons? Is this one of them?

      • Re:Can it not be preserved? (Score:4, Informative)

        by spongeworthy ( 552283 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @08:31AM (#22856200)
        No and no. This is (was) not an enrichment device. It is a research device. You might be thinking of a calutron, which was a primitive enrichment device.
        • Thanks!

          I heard an interesting anecdote about the picture you occasionally see of its operators (a dozen young women, sitting on stools, in front of analogue instrument panels). Apparently, they were completely in the dark about what this facility was doing, but sat there all shift staring at gauges and what-not with instructions to inform a supervisor if something exceeded a given limit.

    • Re:Can it not be preserved? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dun Malg ( 230075 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @08:11AM (#22855964) Homepage

      Givin it's importance in the development of nuclear science, it might be nice to preserve it somehow I would think...
      Look, we can't be expected to save every damn thing that ever played an important role in history. Things have a limited useful life. Who's ever going to go see the remains of a 70+ year old cyclotron. Were you p[lanning on seeing it, only to be disappointed to hear it was being scrapped? I doubt it. It's not like they're filling in the grand canyon. It's a giant lump of scrap metal. Let it go.
    • I'm sure somebody figured out it's worth a lot more to sell for scrap (plus there's the advantage of reclaiming the disused real estate) than any possible sentimental value it may have.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ch-chuck ( 9622 )
      So far we have managed to preserve the scientific knowledge it helped create - that's the most important part. Everything else is just a particular configuration of molecules that'll take precious energy to prevent it from eventually succumbing to entropy.

    • One of the first Cyclotrons is on display, outside in the weather, at the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, California. The 37 inch Cyclotron is big -- you can climb on it, although you'll get pretty rusty. (In fact, only the magnet's core is on display; the Cyclotron's Dees are missing). For a photo with seven Nobel Laureats standing in front of the ol' beast, see http://dsd.lbl.gov/Seaborg.talks/65th-anniv/27.html [lbl.gov]

  • It was always disposable (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jotok ( 728554 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @07:23AM (#22855592)
    No matter how large, complex, or beautiful anything we make is, it is all essentially disposable. We inevitably attach sentiment to things like cars or houses or boats or gigantic cyclotrons but they are just...things.

    Look, the Navy has all this romantic imagery associated with plying the seas in deadly warships (read "Choosers of the Slain" by Kipling) but almost all ships end up as razor blades or sunk for target practice. Likewise a lot of us have fun tinkering with computers...but over the past 5 years haven't we all broken down and rebuilt assorted Frankenboxes for this project or that project a hundred times over?

    It's the adventure of DOING stuff with the things that is important, not the things themselves. As impressive as the cyclotron is, it's the science and discovery that are really meaningful.

    • Re:It was always disposable (Score:4, Insightful)

      by blincoln ( 592401 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @08:17AM (#22856040) Homepage Journal
      It's the adventure of DOING stuff with the things that is important, not the things themselves.

      The things are important because they provide a tangible link between the events they represent and people who weren't present for them. I wasn't even born when the XB-70 program was underway, but when I visited the Air Force Museum and saw the one remaining prototype, it made all of the things I'd read about it more real to me. None of us (other than the vampires) were alive when the ancient trading routes in the Black Sea were in use, but the artifacts discovered there by Robert Ballard help us understand more about them.
      Obviously some things aren't practical to keep around - fleets of obsolete aircraft carriers, for example. But a single cyclotron? What's so important that they need to put in its place?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by hcdejong ( 561314 )
      Yes and no. It's disposable in the sense that the science done on this cyclotron won't be lost when the hardware is scrapped. But I find it does help to be able to see and experience the hardware even if it's not useful anymore. I've visited a number of science and technology museums over the years, and even if I'm familiar with the ideas behind the artefacts shown, they never fail to shed new light on the knowledge I already have.

      We inevitably attach sentiment to things like cars or houses or boats or gigantic cyclotrons but they are just...things.

      There's a large gap between preserving nothing and preserving everything. Th

    • Hmmm... Perhaps they should have built it out of Styrofoam!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
      I wouldn't junk the most notable stuff. What would we know about the ancient Egyptians if they dismantled everything? Most ships are scrapped, but enough are saved so we have a vivid reminder of what things were like in the day.
      • Ironically the single biggest Egyptian boat ever discovered was a funeral boat that had been completely dismantled for easy storage to the after life. They even left instructions on the pieces on how to put it back together. Imagine the Enterprise (CVN not NCC) taken apart and left as lego in a ditch.
    • That doesn't mean we should dismantle every last piece of old technology just because it's lost its original usefulness. Having history present, available for us to see, imagine, learn from, is where innovation and progress comes from.

      They shouldn't dismantle it. They should build a Museum of Nuclear Physics around it and sell tours to high school field trips.

      But I'm sure there's a perfectly wonderful Allen Institute for Public Policy or something slated for the site.
    • It's interestig that you mention warships, because the Columbia Cyclotron was one of a group of cyclotrons that were made using war surplus magnets used on the Marconi Transmitters on WW1 battleships. I worked on it in the late 1950s when they were converting it from an internal beam machine to external beam (i.e., bringing the beam out of the primary chamber). After they had done a couple of experiments with that it was supposed to go to the Smithsonian. I lost touch, but I assumed that it had been remov

  • Field strength? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <hobbes.xmsnet@nl> on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @07:40AM (#22855722)
    I wonder how strong that magnet is.

    • Re:Field strength? (Score:5, Informative)

      by moosesocks ( 264553 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:35AM (#22857010) Homepage
      Unless it's a superconducting electromagnet, it's probably not all that strong, especially in comparison to the NMR equipment that's likely being used elsewhere in the building.

      The largest [wikipedia.org] Cyclotron ever built has a main magnet with a field strength of 0.46 T.

      The magnets in your speakers have a field strength of about 1T. Your hard drive probably contains a 1.5T magnet as well.

      An NMR (MRI) machine will range from anywhere from 1.5T to 7T (although experimental setups can go a good bit higher [wm.edu]).

      The strongest continuous magnetic field produced in a laboratory is 45T.

      The strongest pulsed magnetic field ever created was by the Russians at 2,800T (they cheated and used explosives).

      The reason the magnet is so "huge" is that the field needs to cover a large area.

  • They could make more money... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by effigiate ( 1057610 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @07:41AM (#22855744)
    I bet they could bring in more money if they didn't scrap the whole thing, but instead sold small slices of it. No way they could sell ~65 tons worth of slices, but they could get a lot more if they sold off some of the historic piece of equipment. I'd buy a slice.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Dun Malg ( 230075 )

      I bet they could bring in more money if they didn't scrap the whole thing, but instead sold small slices of it.
      And after they sold 12 slices to all the cyclotron groupies, they'd have to scrap the remaining 99.5% of it. It's not the Berlin Wall, it's a lump of copper and iron. Given the scrap prices for both, the sale of souvenir pieces would be chump change in comparison.
    • I doubt it. You might and maybe a couple hundred others might, but not enough would to make more than the scrap value, especially counting the labor cost of cutting it up in slices people would want to buy.

  • Time to start the orbital cyclotron (Score:4, Funny)

    by Thanshin ( 1188877 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @07:43AM (#22855750)
    1 - Dismantled cyclotron.
    2 - Catapult.
    3 - Orbital assembly robot.
    4 - More catapult.
    5 - ???
    6 - Profit!!!

    Proving once more that if your problem can't be solved by extensive use of catapults, it probably doesn't deserve being solved at all.

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      That's no cyclotron....

  • Auction? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by scubamage ( 727538 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @07:48AM (#22855792)
    Think they'd let us purchase a small chunk for esoteric value? The machine itself isn't leaking radiation and I know there's a ton of nuclear physicists out there that would love a small chunk. Plus it'd prolly be worth more than selling it for scrap if they opened it to the scientific community.
    • I've got some bits of the Nuffield cyclotron in my lab. Old physics equipment rarely dies; it's recycled into the next generations of experiments.

  • hardhack?! (Score:4, Funny)

    by stokessd ( 89903 ) on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @07:48AM (#22855794) Homepage
    The story is tagged as "hardhack" I suppose that's right, as in "hacked to pieces"

    Still seems an inappropriate use of the tag...

    Sheldon
  • Even if the post doesn't say so, I'd bet that this unit is shielded with a LOT of lead. If you have been tracking metals prices lately then you know how valuable this kind of "scrap" has become. At roughly $3k per ton, there is a lot of cash potential here. To quote a wise man: "It's the economy, stupid."

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by swschrad ( 312009 )
      the ROOM may be, but the CYCLOTRON wouldn't be.

      assuming you get the beam focussed after filament replacement, etc, the only danger to anything except credit cards, people standing between loose steel and the moosey magnet, etc. is behind the target window in the chamber casting.

      and they probably had an old cardboard sign, faded, near that point.

      this is why stuff like this is built underground with no easy access. Mother Earth is your shield, suffering those protons and (later) neutrons for you.
  • The bovine vulva (without even a dash of chilli sauce) munching bastards have taken away my tagging rights, so can anybody explain to me WTF this has to do with Battlestar Galactica?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by alta ( 1263 )
      The story is about the cyclotron... Battlestar (which I don't watch) has cyclons for the bad guy.
  • Spencer R. Weart, director of the Center for History of Physics at the American Institute of Physics, a private group in College Park, Md., said the only cyclotron that rivaled Columbia's in importance was at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he said, the school put one of the great magnets outdoors on permanent display.

    That must make for some fun times, little cars suddenly veering off the road.
  • I work on the 12th floor of Pupin and I'm just now hearing about this. Perhaps I could sneak a chunk of debris. The larger cyclotron at Irvington has been dismantled and the concrete shielding is just sitting outside, rusting away. You can see it strewn about: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=nevis+laboratory&sll=40.855949,-73.927085&sspn=0.009186,0.023367&ie=UTF8&ll=41.02768,-73.873587&spn=0.000573,0.00146&t=h&z=20&iwloc=B [google.com]

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      and the concrete shielding is just sitting outside, rusting away.


      Wow! That must be some wicked concrete if it's rusting away.

      (Posting anonymously due to having moderated this thread)

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Govno ( 779519 )
      Just because I'm curious, how exactly is a concrete shield rusting?

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by solamentedoug ( 1262002 )
        Like most large items made of concrete, its reinforced with steel, like rebar. The parking lot is stained a lovely brown from it. In summer, the whole lot of them are covered in vines. Very Logan's Run.

    • I work on the 12th floor of Pupin and I'm just now hearing about this.
      1) I think it's actually under Mudd/CEPSR/Uris, not Pupin -- at least, that's what the kids tell me.
      2) They were keeping it quiet, trying to stave off the rioting SEAS students and CUSFS larpers.
      3) Now I'm sad. I missed out on the WTC, too. Why must everything cool die before I get there?
  • ...stupid? If this can be sold for scrap metal, than I assume it's not radioactive anymore and safe to handle. If that's the case, they could probably make a killing slapping pieces of it onto plaques, numbering them, and selling them.

    Enough geeks would be interested in owning a piece of scientific history that this would certainly make them a lot more money than scrapping it.

    Let's say I had 100 beer cans from 1934, intact but opened. Would it, in any way, be a smart idea to sell them for the $2-3 in sc

  • Big Bertha? 12 feet? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mmontour ( 2208 ) <mail@mmontour.net> on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @11:07AM (#22858534)
    <dundee>That's not a cyclotron. That's [triumf.info] a cyclotron.</dundee>
  • For a minute, I thought I read "Battlestar Columbia Holds Wake for Historic Cylon".

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