Columbia Holds Wake For Historic Cyclotron

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.'"

a piece of history

A piece of history has never been so heavy.

Mod parent down

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!

Deeznutz!

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 [slashdot.org]

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Yeah, with a little elbow grease and a 4600 pound, 4 kilowatt magnet [rutgers.edu]. Which most of us have lying around at home.

It was always disposable

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

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?

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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 sc

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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.

Field strength?

I wonder how strong that magnet is.

Re:Field strength?

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...

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.

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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 co

Time to start the orbital cyclotron

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.

Auction?

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.

hardhack?!

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

Big Bertha? 12 feet?

<dundee>That's not a cyclotron. That's [triumf.info] a cyclotron.</dundee>

Re:Can it not be preserved?

Some of its parts have been sent to the Smithsonian years ago. All that's left is the magnet.

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Magnet, eh?

Note to self: leave hard drive at home.

Re:Can it not be preserved?

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.

Re:Can it not be preserved?

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.

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I thought the propaganda this week was that nuclear is clean, green and the energy of the future. So why wouldn't everyone want a piece of that action?

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Nah. Typical hawkish fud. Iran may float on oil, but they import most of their gasoline and are forced to subsidize the cost of it so their citizens can afford to fill up their cars...In short, crude oil isn't much use if you can't refine it, and why the h

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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

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The story is about the cyclotron... Battlestar (which I don't watch) has cyclons for the bad guy.

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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.