can anybody tell me about particle acclerators?

Question

i read about particle accelerators associated with nuclear fusion and fission in physics. you can give me a basic explanation coz im only in the 10th standard

Answer 1

You can easily make a particle accelerator. Just pick up an object (say a marble) and drop it. The particle is the marble and the force doing the accelerating is gravity. You can build one using magnetism - just place a small magnetic ball on a table and slowly move a magnet towards it. When they're fairly close the ball (particle) will accelerate towards the magnet. The accelerators used by physicists use the magnetic method (really called electro-magnetism). The particles are charged particles - electrons or protons, and the magnets are much bigger and more powerful and are arranged to make the particle whizz round in a circle, but the principal is exactly the same as the ball on the table.
Accelerators are used to get the particles travelling at almost the speed of light when they're smashed together and physicist look at the bits that fly off and work out what atomic particles are made of and how they're glued together.

Answer 2

Cyclotron is the best example for particle acclerator. It consists of a pair of semicircular discs which are hollow. The particle has enough space in it to make circular paths. The whole instrument is placed in a strong magnetic field which acts perpendicular to the plane of the discs. The two discs are connected to an alternating voltage source too, so that the polarity of the discs change frequently.
To start with, suppose that the a prticle ( say proton ) is placed at the centre of the discs.It will be attracted into the negative disc with a certain velocity. But since it is moving in a perpendicular magnetic field it takes a semi-circular path. By the time it completes its semicircular path in that disc, the polarity changes. The other disc is negative now. The proton will be attracted into the other disc with a greater velocity. it takes another semicircular path in that disc. The process is repeated. During each semicrcular path its velocity is increased. The particle would have attained a tremendous velocity when it comes out of the instrument.
You would understand this better with the help of a figure. But i don't know how i can attach a figure along with this.
Good luck.

Answer 3

Particle accelerators are large machines which accelerate very small portions of matter in a vacuum tube.
the common design of such a tube is a giant ring of a few miles lenght, in most cases running inside a tunnel under the surface.
The matter in the ring is hold in the tubes center and accelerated using strong magnetic fields.
At specific points in the structure scientists placed complicated detectors and try to shoot matter on targets within the ring, or try to hit other accelerated matter coming from another machine.
the expected outcome of this is getting to know subatomic particles, and define their properties.
Since those particles being accelerated are very small and enormous energies are being used particles collide with very high energy which is necessary to break atoms apart.
Accelerators generate high ammounts of synchroton radiation, which is shielded by the tunnel walls they operate in and do not produce highly radioactive waste like nuclear plants.
The ultimate goal in using particle accelerators is to find fundamental laws of physics bringing together quantumn physics and conventional physics, since there are still alot of unsolved mysteries.
hope that helps ?

Answer 4

A particle accelerator is a device that uses electric fields to propel electrically charged particles to high speeds and magnetic fields to contain them. There are two basic types: linear (i.e. straight-line) accelerators and circular accelerators.



Beam lines leading from the Van de Graaf accelerator to various experiments, in the basement of the Jussieu Campus in ParisLinear high-energy accelerators use a linear array of plates (or drift tubes) to which an alternating high-energy field is applied. As the particles approach a plate they are accelerated towards it by an opposite polarity charge applied to the plate. As they pass through a hole in the plate, the polarity is switched so that the plate now repels them and they are now accelerated by it towards the next plate. Normally a stream of "bunches" of particles are accelerated, so a carefully controlled AC voltage is applied to each plate to continuously repeat this for each bunch.


In early particle accelerators a Cockcroft-Walton voltage multiplier was responsible for voltage multiplying. This piece of the accelerator helped in the development of the atomic bomb. Built in 1937 by Philips of Eindhoven it currently resides in the National Science Museum in London, England.As the particles approach the speed of light the switching rate of the electric fields becomes so high that they operate at microwave frequencies, and so RF cavity resonators are used in higher energy machines instead of simple plates.

DC accelerator types capable of accelerating particles to speeds sufficient to cause nuclear reactions are Cockcroft-Walton generators or voltage multipliers, which convert AC to high voltage DC, or Van de Graaff generators that use static electricity carried by belts.

The largest and most powerful particle accelerators, such as the RHIC, the LHC (scheduled to start operation in 2007) and the Tevatron, are used for experimental particle physics. Particle accelerators can also produce proton beams, which can produce "proton-heavy" medical or research isotopes as opposed to the "neutron-heavy" ones made in reactors. An example of this type of machine is LANSCE at Los Alamos.
Everyday examples of particle accelerators are those found in television sets and X-ray generators. Low-energy accelerators such as cathode ray tubes and X-ray generators use a single pair of electrodes with a DC voltage of a few thousand volts between them. In an X-ray generator, the target itself is one of the electrodes. A low-energy particle accelerator called an ion implanter is used in the manufacture of integrated circuits

Answer 5

hey, I just finished year 11 at school, and I happen to study physics. Well im not sure 100% but, maybe these websites may assit you:
-http://www1.elsevier.com/cdweb/journals/01689002/viewer.htt?viewtype=keywords&rangeselected=370
-en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/physics/panvini/p110b/lecture28.html

Answer 6

don't jam your pretty head with bulldirt like that