Harold Barnard
Tabletop Tokamak
I designed and built this tokamak (magnetic confinement fusion device) in my college apartment during the fall of 2005. Most of the physical construction is complete. It has a major radius of 1.5 inches. The design parameters were optimized a much as possible but were limited materials that I could obtain obtain at the time and my level of tokamak experience at the time.
More recently, with the knowledge I have gained as a fusion energy graduate student, I am now in the process of designing a new tokamak with higher magnetic field, electron cyclotron resonance RF heating and better power supplies.
So far I built a new vacuum vessel, though I am considering another iteration. I have also acquired enough magnet wire, a capacitor bank to pulse the coils, a tank of deuterium for fuel, a magnetron for RF heating, a directional coupler and stub tuner for impedance matching with the plasma, and a variety of other important components that are not shown in this picture.