Hello from Virginia

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Chris Mullins
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Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2017 11:32 am
Real name: Chris Mullins
Location: Shenandoah Valley, VA
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Hello from Virginia

Post by Chris Mullins »

Hello,

I'm an electrical engineer, and will be mentoring my son (17) as he creates a demo fusor, and from there possibly a full fusor. Thanks to everyone for providing such a wealth of information in the FAQs and other posts! As we make progress, my son will be posting updates.

Chris
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Richard Hull
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Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
Real name: Richard Hull

Re: Hello from Virginia

Post by Richard Hull »

Welcome to the forums. It is always nice to see a father as mentor in a fusion project. We have several here who mentored son's and even daughters in their fusion efforts. At least two of those fathers are still here with fusors of their own, long after the kids went to college and are pursuing careers. Any of those father's want to chime in with advice?

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Dennis P Brown
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Real name: Dennis Brown

Re: Hello from Virginia

Post by Dennis P Brown »

From my own experience, one has the tendency to over mentor; that is, do far too much. Learning is a skill one can best achieve by trying and (sometimes) failing. Realize that your primary job is safety (so you must understand the issues very well), but mostly providing direction not doing it for them. Learn to step in only if you feel they have give 110% and are starting to decide that they can't do the task and are considering quitting. Then aid them without doing it for them but by assisting. If this problem occurs too often, it is important to then step away and allow failure.

I give this advice because I have too often tried to handle many of the road blocks that occurred when my daughter did her home research and that prevented my daughter from learning via failure (of course, I never did this relative to her school work!) Still, I didn't do too bad since she has completed a major experiment on the German Stellarator just last summer that a few months ago she presented a paper on, at the APS Plasma Forum.)
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