In this space, visitors are invited to post any comments, questions, or skeptical observations about Philo T. Farnsworth's contributions to the field of Nuclear Fusion research.Subject: Re: Non-Thermonuclear neutrons-
Date: Aug 10, 2:07 am
Poster: Dave CooperOn Aug 10, 2:07 am, Dave Cooper wrote:
>A spectroscope unless fitted with an ultra narrow slit and a high ruled grating counldn't separate the fine lines due to crowding. Tom Ligon had to order his Ocean optics setup for the Hbeta line and the total area he could see really was high res, but his bandwidth was reduced to nothing. The instrument couldn't be used for normal spectoscopic work. Plus the lines of the nuclear ash would be incredibly weak and probably not seen any way.
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>The RGA is much better due to its quadrapole sniffing out delicate mass numbers in infintesimally small amounts.
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>Richard Hull
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I agree with Richard's observations.. The spectrographic analysis would require greater than ppb concentrations - more likely ppm.
The Mass Spectrometer...or a GC-MS combo.. would be much more sensitive... but....
Hydrogen outgassing and water/ OH decomposition would muddy the stoichiometry with regard to H. The He3 would be definitive assuming enough is present to register. A good MS (RGA in full suit) with a modern channeltron type multiplier can have a current gain of more than 10^8, if the system pressure is low enough to allow full voltage on the multiplier channel...(typically < 10^-6 Torr)...Coupled with a standard instrumentation amplifier having a gain of up to 10^5 or so, a sufficient sensitivity probably exists to detect just a few ions provided other species are not too close in atomic weights.
However, given that Hydrogen will be present in fairly large amounts from water, and that ordinary He4 is present at several ppm naturally, trace levels of He3 might be challenging to detect.
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Dave Cooper