Fire & Noise? Must be Science!

[revchris]

At work, I'm now working with our new resident nut. He may not be a nut, he may really be a genius, but for now, we're working under the basic guideline of "all geniuses are nuts until their thing works."

I built a furnace out of spare firebrick and we loaded his samples into it and lit it up with one of the foundry torches. After about an hour, we turned it off and are currently waiting to see if it works. If it does, he's got a potential process for making really cheap silicon. If it doesn't, he's learned something, and then will go away until he has a new idea.

Comments

[misteropinion.livejournal.com]

"all geniuses are nuts until their thing works."

I love that.

Silicon doesn't need to be made, it needs to be isolated. If you just want it and don't care who's riding along, I've got beaches of the stuff.

[revchris.livejournal.com]

So, yeah, I should have stated it a little more clearly. If it works, though, it'll (in theory) be a way to get 99.9% pure silicon via a bulk bucket-chemistry-scope process. Bob's goal is to make photovoltaic cells cost a tenth of what they currently do.

[kantrip.livejournal.com]

NEAT!