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To contribute to the ongoing search for economical alternative energy, Tucker Leavitt, a Junior (at the time of this writing) at Animas High School, is working on a project aimed towards designing and building a generator that can harness the chemical energy stored in the intermolecular hydrogen bonds in water. He plans to enter in the Society for Science and the Public’s annual science fair competition, in which winners can receive scholarships and other scholastic awards.

Over the past couple decades, several experiments have been conducted showing that this bond energy can be liberated by firing a kiloampere pulse through a small quantity of distilled water. The released bond energy manifests as kinetic energy, resulting in a sort of water explosion. Purportedly, the kinetic energy of the explosion exceeds the electrical energy delivered to initiate it, characterizing an over-unity reaction.

tucker leavitt Tucker Leavitt with his research setup, including the 2530B DSO.

Leavitt is interested in reproducing these experimental results and then finding a way to harness the kinetic energy of these explosions to convert it into a more useful form. In order to do so, he needed a way to quantify and monitor the high-current pulses used to initiate these water explosions and chose B&K Precision’s 2530B DSO to help him.

To determine how much internal water energy was released in the explosion process, he had to measure the amount of electrical energy transferred in the discharge circuit. The method used to perform this measurement required the use of the 2530B paired with a current transformer. The oscilloscope allowed him to measure the discharge current over time and view interesting results of his experiment. "The 2530B in single-sweep mode handled very well in this application," mentioned Leavitt. "The oscilloscope is very user friendly, with large, clearly labeled controls, and extensive user menus that can be browsed on the scope’s display."

Leavitt also found the Auto set function beneficial in his tests since it greatly simplified the triggering process and rendered repetitive waveforms clearly and easily with the push of a button. “Learning how to use it [2530B] was easy, which is more than can be said for many more complicated oscilloscopes,” replied Leavitt. 

 

Tucker Leavitt

Tucker Leavitt is a student at Animas High School in Durango, Colorado. In the past 4 years he has worked on various science projects including: "The Effects of Ionization on Spark Energy Content", Electrostatic Power Amplification", "Predicting the Inferno”, and "Golden Music: Phi and Musical Frequency Ratios".

Tucker was able to present these projects and consequently received the following awards:

  • First place award in senior division, Da Vinci Award for best project at San Juan Regional Science Fair
  • Naval Science special award, team category award, second place overall for senior division team projects at Colorado Science Fair
  • Finalist at Intel International Science Fair and multiple President's Awards for academic excellence

 

Animas High School

Animas High School is a charter school located in Durango, CO.

Instrument Used

2530B

Model 2530B
25 MHz, 500 MSa/s Digital Storage Oscilloscope



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