Talk:Polywell

message: In reviewing the University of Sydney experiments, it is evident that the machine that they used was non-conformal, and suffered from problems all ready addressed  and corrected by Bussard in 2006.  And yet the article presents this as a proof of the failure of the Polywell concept.   As such what is value to this article?  Unless someone can give a justification for it,  I think this whole section should be removed.  RevDan (talk) 13:03, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title: University of Sydney experiments

message: I touched up the front a bit to make the main points of the device more clear. The intro could still use less jargon but I think a layman could read it and at least understand the primary concepts. The first paragraph is the simplest who/what I could think of while retaining the technically correct definition. Entropyfails (talk) 10:01, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleaning up jargon 

message: I don't understand one bit of the article. It says that polyhedrons should have an even number of faces at each vertex, but don't the cube (used for all iterations of the polywell to WB-7) and the dodecahedrom (future WB-8) both have three faces at each vertex?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.200.200 (talk) 02:17, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Both the cube and the dodecahedron have to be rectified (fully truncated). This is mentioned in the article, but a bit indirectly. On 14 Feb an anonymous user added the precise names but was reverted 2 days later. Would it have helped you to understand the concpet if you had read cuboctahedron instead of truncated cube, or icosidodecahedron instead of truncated dodecahedron? I suspect not, seeing as you apparently skimmed over the "truncated" part anyway. Any other suggestions? --Art Carlson (talk) 07:06, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  I didn't skip over the "truncated part" and had this same question.  The WB devices pictured don't appear to have coils on the triangular faces.  So the vertex facing the camera in the WB-6 photo on the article would indeed seem to have an even number of adjacent coils -- 2.  Which would leave the dreaded line cusps.  What am I missing? beefman (talk) 05:09, 28 December 2008 (UTC)

text: Perhaps they could be given a brief description of what they are and then linked to cuboctahedron/icosi... Such as "a torus on each face of a cube, resulting in an approximation of a cuboctahedron..." Kevin Baastalk 16:04, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Or inserting "fully" would do, much more concisesly. :) Kevin Baastalk 16:06, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

text: Just changed the truncated descriptions back to cuboctahedron and icosidodecahedron.  The standard terminology for spatial geometry uses "truncated" to refer to non-fully truncated polyhedron.  Those two polyhedra in particular are notable because they are exactly intermediate between the cube and its dual, the octahedron, and the dodecahedron and its dual, the icosahedron. Just because the developers misunderstand geometric notation shouldn't be a reason to perpetuate the misunderstanding. 75.165.85.144 (talk) 17:30, 7 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polywell geometry 

message: Specifically, $2 million.
Sources:
* http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/04/inertial-electrostatic-bussard-fusion.html
* http://iecfusiontech.blogspot.com/2009/04/polywell-gets-in-on-act.html
* http://www.defenselink.mil/recovery/plans_reports/2009/march/Final_ARRA_Report_to_Congress-24_Mar_09ver2.pdf (page 166, i believe)
How to put this in the article?
Kevin Baastalk 20:38, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.  (Thanks, Jules Verne.  And for all the stories...) Kevin Baastalk 14:17, 6 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Funding via the American Recovery and Reinvestment act 

message: This section
:"If the configuration is looked at as solenoids on the faces of a polyhedron, then the polyhedron chosen must have an even number of faces at each vertex, so that the polarity of the solenoids can alternate. Infinitely many polyhedra satisfy this property, for instance all antiprisms, 2n-agonal bipyramids, and all rectified (fully truncated) polyhedra. As can be seen in the picture, WB-6 is a truncated cube. Bussard's planned WB-8 would be a truncated dodecahedron. These geometries have several interesting properties. The shape of the magnetic potential well is the dual polyhedron of the machine. Each polyhedron could be constructed two different ways from circular coils. The edges of the polyhedron could also be wired directly as with Bussard's NPG polyhedral grid (there is a eulerian path because all vertices are even), but this is probably undesirable because every line passing through the center and a vertex will by symmetry have zero magnetic field."
is in desperate need of a rewrite.  To be honest, I'd remove it totally as it adds nothing to the article that isn't more clearly dealt with elsewhere, so I'll give someone a chance to edit it, but as it's extremely (inappropriately) technical and adds virtually nothing to the article, I plan to chuck it eventually.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.33.134.146 (talk • contribs) 18:45, 17 June 2009 
::Agreed. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia (i.e. reasonably accessibly to all), not a technical paper filled with high-end jargon that sounds like gobbledygook to a non-scientist. --JulesVerne (talk) 11:32, 17 June 2009 (GMT)
:::I agree that it could probably be written a lot better.  I had no trouble reading it myself, but I guess that just shows how much of an intellectual gap can develop just by knowing the jargon (e.g. "dual of", "eulerian path").  I did a quick read through the whole article and didn't find this information duplicated anywhere.  the closest i found was a mention of a truncated doedec in the intro para of the "future of polywell" section.  Also, this information is in the most appropriate section for it "the polywell approach", and it is an integral part of the design.  not all that complicated, but neither is the whole polywell contraption, and if you deviate from the geometric ruleset, you'll never get it to work.  in sum, not saying that a polywell needs to be a quasi-spherical shell of alternating polarity solenoids is like not saying that a tokamak needs to be a torus w/solenoids around both the polodial and torodial axi.  it's electromagnetic confinement, folks, and for that you need electromagnets! Kevin Baastalk 01:26, 22 June 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I see, however, that that para does have a lot of unneccessary info in it.  Most of it is tangential.  Only the first sentence is really important, and it never mentions anywhere that it needs to be quasi spherical or why it has to have the geometry that it does. Kevin Baastalk 01:52, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

text: There is no need to be speedy or hasty here.... or to cut content that has been added in good faith.  Tagging it for requesting sources/rewrite is certainly more than sufficient at least for awhile.... certainly more than a week.  This article has been up for some time, and giving it more time isn't hurting anybody.  Edit tags are glaring enough that over time there usually is some sort of action on those sections... and bringing up the issue here on the talk page certainly is more than sufficient.  --Robert Horning (talk) 03:07, 25 June 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: ok I'll dive a little more time for a response, but this paragraph really does not belong in the article.  This paragraph is just a restatement of a speculative discussion on talk-pollywel.org and is not at all reflective of Dr Bussards research.  I'm fairly well read on the writings of Dr. Bussard, and nowhere do I recall him talking about the concept of virtual solenoids.  On this page, there have been many objections raised, about this paragraph, which certainly justifies it's removal, and no responses which justify it's inclusion 75.149.62.182 (talk) 01:07, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Desperate need for a rewrite 

message: Can anyone explain why there's 2008 news in the 2009 section, and 2007 news in the 2008 section?
And what does FY stand for, anyways? :)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.183.153.144 (talk) 11:33, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Fiscal_year#United_States: "The U.S. government's fiscal year begins on October 1 of the previous calendar year and ends on September 30 of the year with which it is numbered." In addition, some of the events mentioned had to do with landing the contract for work done later. --Art Carlson (talk) 12:04, 23 July 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  2008 news in "FY 2009", 2007 news in "FY 2008" 

message: I have made a user box that you can add to your user-page, to show support for the  Polywell Nuclear Fusion . ... Misty Willows talk  02:43, 19 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you! — Wdfarmer (talk) 03:14, 20 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text:  This template has now been moved to User:UBX/polywell.  I have updated the links above.  Thanks! Plastikspork ―Œ(talk) 19:24, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Polywell Userbox 

message: Editors here may find useable material in this article User:LeadSongDog come howl 18:40, 5 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Source 

message: ...which means they almost have the thing built.   oh science, why must you be so slow!  well i suppose it's much faster than the tokamak/ITER project, which if we're lucky we might see net power sometime this century.  (assuming, of course, that we live that long.)  it just would be nice to have something new to add to this article.  (and it would be really great to find out if the scaling laws hold!) Kevin Baastalk 19:55, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  nearing 1 yr anniversary of WB8 contract 

message: A recent change introduced a new section into the article about Iranian research into fusion reactions that may be similar to the Polywell concept at least on some level.  I saw the cited paper, which certainly is interesting by itself, but is there anybody else reporting this idea?  It certainly sounds interesting, and I'd love to find a "second source" of this information.  --Robert Horning (talk) 19:56, 16 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Iranian research into Polywell 

message: a while ago i wrote an all-pairs n-body electromagnetic force simulator for GPGPUs and simulated some polywell configurations in it.  i recorded videos of it and posted them on youtube under the account name "happyjack27".  
*http://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+happyjack27&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
i noticed some youtube vidoes and the like from "normal-everyday-people" like me in the "external links" section, and was wondering if it would be appropriate to include a link to that youtube channel or a video or two from it in the external links section.
you can see mine and other people's posts on the talk-polywell forums regarding the simulations in the threads:
*http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2720
*http://www.talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2741
Kevin Baastalk 17:38, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: My concern is mainly summed up in WP:SELFPUBLISH.  Those are some beautiful videos though, and in terms of using them within the article itself it would be wonderful if you could upload a couple of the better ones to the Wikimedia Commons (with appropriate licensing).  I added a link in the external references area, but I'll leave this still open to debate if there is somebody else who thinks this is inappropriate.  --Robert Horning (talk) 21:21, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  addition to external links? 

message: under the main heading of Design there is first a discussion of Farnsworth-Hirsch and then Elmore-Tuck-Watson and then a Polywell. This Polywell section states "to avoid the losses related to the electrons striking the grid, the Polywell uses magnetic fields to shield it." which is, in my mind, very incorrect. There is no magnetic shielding of grids, there is magnetic confinement of a ball of electrons. I see the Polywell polarities being the same as the Farnsworth, positive outer grid and negative inner grid and positive ions being injected. The only real difference between Farnsworth and Polywell is that the negative center of the polywell is and a ball of electrons confined using magnetic mirrors. I think the ETW references are confusing and backwards. This is my proposed new text which would replace the first two current paragraphs.
Like Farnsworth, the polywell confines positive ions through their attraction to the negative potential well at the center. However in the Polywell this negative well is created by electrons that are held inside a magnetic mirror, creating a virtual negative cathode. This configuration avoids the Farnsworth losses related to ions striking the central negative cathode.
Previous text:
Like ETW, the polywell confines positive ions through their attraction to the negative potential well which is created by the electrons that are held inside a positively charged grid. However, to avoid the losses related to the electrons striking the grid, the Polywell uses magnetic fields to shield it. The magnetic fields are configured in a way that increases electron confinement so that there are many more electrons inside the core than outside.
The reactor volume is defined by the coils producing the magnetic field. The coils are held at a positive potential relative to the surrounding outer grid which may or may not be the walls of the vacuum chamber. This provides the same function as the positive and negative grids in the ETW fusor which is to restrain and return any electrons that escape the core. The charged coils are known as MaGrids, from "Magnetic Grids".[citation needed]
DavesPlanet (talk) 12:48, 2 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Design section issues 

message: Does anyone else think that following the edit of the 29th of May some of the language in this article has become a little too juvenile. There were one or two improvements in that edit, but on the whole, I think it reduced the quality of this article rather than increased it. I particularly don't like "fly" (for move), “feel” (experience), "back in" (back towards), "makes" (generates?), and I don't really see the point in the change from grid to cage, especially as it's inconsistently used. There's also the use of "would", in the sense of the conditional mood, that I find confusing in context. There are also one or two clear misspellings (overtime = time and a third/half) and solecisms that were introduced, but I'll have a look at fixing those I can at some point.Graham.Fountain | Talk 13:36, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit of  29th of May 

message: This history section could be cleaned up a bit.  This recent navy work is now 5 years old.  It probably should be combined with the history of the machine.  The history section, in general, is pretty messy.  It has the history of the machine, the history of funding for the machine and quotes from Bussard.  That is pretty confusing.  Some of the Bussard facts and quotes should probably be moved to the separate article on him.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by WikiHelper2134 (talk • contribs) 19:11, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time to move the FY 2008 Section into history 

message: Hey guys, ETW fusors are a misnomer. They only modeled these machines. They never built one. Here is their original paper: William, Elmore C. "On the Inertial-Electrostatic Confinement of a Plasma." Physics of Fluids ser. 2 (1959): 239-46. Web. People stick to this ETW concept like glue and it is unnecessary.  Also, how can an Elmore-Tuck-Watson machine be based on a Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor when their work came 5 years later?  All the Polywell is doing is swapping a negative inner cage for a negative inner cloud of plasma.  It is simple, and a simpler explanation should suffice.    
unsigned comment added by WikiHelper2134 (talk • contribs) 19:11, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Elmore, Tuck and Watson Never Built a Fusor 

message: Through the many years we have all watched the polywell, two major questions have always existed: (1) Are the electrons in the center, non-thermal?  (2) Does the electron cloud go diamagnetic?  If both were true, it would be huge.  A non-thermal cloud means the Lawson criteria may not apply.  (Gasp!)  It also means Rider's criticisms may be less applicable. (A big deal).  EMC2 new publication partially answers the second question: electron diamagnetism.  They put a loop of wire into the plasma and measured the electron cloud exhibiting a real "extra" magnetic flux.  This combined with an X-ray signal - detected from the cloud - was used to suggest the electrons have two modes: a low and high beta mode.  In low beta, the confinement sucks.  In high-beta, the electron cloud is diamagnetic, confinement Hell-a-rocks!  The data suggests a clear switching between each.  But, I am not convinced we have a data showing the cloud is non-thermal.  (Someone, prove me wrong?) It is REALLY hard to accept this cloud does not go to a bell curve, considering bell curves are some of the most accepted concepts in all of science, engineering or mathematics.  So Saying: "The Lawson criteria does not apply because the plasma is not a bell curve" in this wikipedia article does gives me a sickly feeling.  Anyone want to add to this?
:Yes, the second question have been answered positively with new published results by EMC2. Huge step forward! The first question remains to be experimentally proven. About the Lawson criterion issue, I added some conditional statements.Tokamac (talk) 09:52, 1 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Electron cloud is non-thermal? 

message: The 'Free-boundary plasma' heading seems to break up the 'cusp confinement' section. Can we delete this heading or explain it ? - Rod57 (talk) 15:36, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Free-boundary plasma heading confusing 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 7 external links on Polywell. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
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*Added  tag to http://ecow.engr.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/getbig/ne/527/anderson/notes/bussard_wb6rpt080604fnl0107.pdf
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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110722210109/https://www.neco.navy.mil/upload/N68936/N6893609R0024RFP.pdf to https://www.neco.navy.mil/upload/N68936/N6893609R0024RFP.pdf
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*Added  tag to http://www.santafenewmexican.com/SantaFeNorthernNM/Robert_Bussard__1928_2007_Physicist_known_for_pursuits_into_fus
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 07:24, 26 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified (January 2018) 

message: An electron accelerated across a 4KV electrical field yields a 4KeV electron. However protons and neutrons are about 2000 electron masses, so wouldn't a Deuteron accelerated in a 4KV voltage field have 16MeV of energy?
Shjacks45 (talk) 02:43, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: No. Energy equals charge times potential (voltage). Since a deuteron has the same charge (of the opposite sign) as an electron, it would aquire the same energy, i.e., 4KeV. Mateat (talk) 00:09, 30 May 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: energy of 4KeV ions