“Boy, I’d sure hate to have to trouble-shoot this little gadget!” Bud wagged his head.
“Sort of a miniature atom smasher, isn’t it?” Ted asked.
“Works on the same principle,” Tom explained, “but a better name would be a particle accelerator. An atom smasher uses high-speed particles to bombard a target and cause artificial radioactivity. This machine speeds up the particles just to make them increase in mass.”
“And this housing at the bottom is the particle racecourse?” put in Bud.
“Might call it that.” Tom chuckled. “The racecourse is actually an electromagnetic field provided by the magnet. We also have to create a vacuum, so that the speeded-up particles don’t go bumping into any air molecules.”
SIZZLING METAL 17
“Track clear and fast!” Bud quipped. “Which is more than you can say for my brain right now.”
“Take a rest, fly boy-you’ve been overdoing it,” Tom said with mock sympathy. “Why not take Ted on a sight-seeing tour of the Citadel while I finish setting this up?”
“Sure. Explaining an atomic reactor should be simple after this.” Bud grinned.
“Come on, Ted, let’s leave our genius to his jigsaw puzzle.”
The space cadet laughed. “Okay. See you later, Tom.”
Within an hour after his two companions had left, Tom had his new invention completely assembled. Then he drove over to the metalwork-ing shop and forged a set of thick copper bars to carry the current from the transformer to his machine. These, however, proved to be so heavy that he discarded them and constructed new ones of aluminum.
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