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Together At Last, FERMIAC #3

A project log for FERMIhack

Building a replica FERMIAC mechanical computer

jeremy-ruhlandJeremy Ruhland 10/24/2016 at 03:070 Comments

Backdated Oct 19th, 2016:

Everything is finally assembled! As far as I know this is the 3rd FERMIAC to have ever been constructed and the only one outside of a museum. The device is shown here on top of a mockup diagram of a nuclear fuel rod.

The original FERMIAC is almost entirely brass and must weigh quite a bit. This version is very light which makes it quite back heavy, it tips up unless you've got your hand on the thumb screw. I might add some weight to the front to prevent that from happening during use.

I've yet to use it to preform a monte carlo simulation because there are still a few unknowns about the process. I need to find out what the proper scale is for the diagram and I also need tables to select the proper distance measurement settings on drum F. The nature of the random values I need to feed in are also unknown, they follow a distribution that matches certain physical properties of neutrons in different materials, ie absorption probability, scattering potential, etc. More research is required before I can test it out but I'll be filming the process so others can see how its done.

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