One of the issues I have seen raised from time to time is how to extract usable engergy from a fusor.
While playing with my solid state laser pointer, I had a wild idea. Stretch the spherical fusor into a tube, and the anode is elongated to, for discussion, a helix running down the length of the cylinder. The fusion region would then be a line along the axis instead of a point at the center of a sphere. A certain amount of the energy released would be along the axis. If reflective surfaces were positioned at each end of the cylinder, energy would bounce back and forth between them. Axial energy that is in phase with the bouncing energy would enhance it. Out of phase energy and non-axial energy would probably be lost as heat. At some point, the intensity of the reflected energy would become great enough to pass through one of the reflective surfaces at the end.
As I understand it, this is essentially the way that gas lasers work. The difference between a laser and a LEIC is where the energy comes from. In the LEIC, it would come from fusion. The output would probably be light, but perhaps it could be microwave radiation, like in a MASER.
Of course, the energy produced by fusion would have to be greater than that introduced to the system in the electrostatic field.
I know that I have mentioned this before in the old BBS system, but I thought I would offer it again in this new forum.
Created on Monday, April 02, 2001 10:01 PM EDT by w j ward