On February 28, 2012 we went on a long and treacherous journey.
(Okay, it wasn’t that bad. )
It was our trip to the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. It was pretty cool! We had learned a lot about it in class previously but to see how passionate the people who were working on the project were about it made it even that much better.
The Plasma Center is recognized as one of the leading university research laboratories in the physics and engineering aspects of magnetic and inertial fusion.
Their machine, Alcator C-Mod, uses magnetic fields to confine hydrogen atoms and get them hot enough to fuse. This particular machine is a tokamak, which prevents the particles following the magnetic field lines from escaping. It looks similar to this:
They run their machines for a couple of seconds, and it takes almost the amount of energy that the entire city of Cambridge uses! The downside to this is that they use so much energy, but they do not make nearly enough of it back. MIT is working on it though, the hope for the future is to someday be able to produce much more energy and create an alternative energy source that is more economically and earthly sound.
On a sad note, this particular research center has got their funding cut, so more funding can go to ITER, another fusion machine, bigger and stronger. More info here: ITER. It is really sad because all of the members of the MIT Plasma Center have worked so hard and put so much time into it, and now they can’t continue. There is one thing we can do to help them though, a petition. An online petition is up and running to help MIT keep their funding. You can find out more information about the program here: http://www.fusionfuture.org/why-fusion-energy/intro-to-fusion/ and you can sign the petition here: Petition
Nice simple way of capturing what the MIT trip was all about! I liked how you added the petition to that people who read your blog can go and sign it.