[time-nuts] You can build a fountain from the things you find at home...

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Tue Sep 27 18:56:52 UTC 2011


I just finished my Colloquium on leap-seconds at the USNO, and afterwards
had lunch with Demitriou Matsakis and one of his Fountain building physicists.

Remembering a previous discussion on the topic here, I asked if building
a fountain would be a feasible amateur project.

The answer is "yes, if you have enough money".

The shared wisdom was that you want to build your vacuum vessel out
of aluminium, which in addition to being a-magnetic also makes it
possible to bolt the windows in, rather than mounting them by
welding and that rubidium is a better target atom than cesium.

Gentlemen, start your lathes...

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.



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