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Star Chambers
This book explains the revolutionary technology that bottles the power of the sun... in star chambers. It explains nuclear fusion power generation, particularly the use of tokomaks, aimed at 14-18 year old readers, though suitable for adults too.
130 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2012
2 people are currently reading
15 people want to read
About the author
Melanie Windridge
5 books16 followersDr Melanie Windridge is a plasma physicist, speaker, writer… with a taste for adventure. She has a PhD in fusion energy from Imperial College London and is Communications Consultant for fusion start-up Tokamak Energy. She also works in education with the Ogden Trust, Anturus and Your Life. Melanie loves the mountains and believes science and exploration go hand in hand.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
August 27, 2013
I was a bit wary when I saw the cover of Star Chambers, as it looks like a typical self-published cover illustration, but inside I was pleasantly surprised to find a nicely laid out and generously illustrated (in colour) book.
The aim is to give the intended audience of GCSE and upwards students some background in nuclear fusion and a feel for the long slog we face to develop a fusion reactor. Melanie Windridge provides plenty of good information on fusion – mostly tokomaks, but one chapter on inertial confinement (the mega laser zapping method more favoured in the US). She puts her information across in a friendly, informal fashion and some of the illustrations are delightful – a flipbook animation of plasma disruption in a tokomak, for instance, and illustrations of atoms with grapes for electrons, peaches for protons and apples for neutrons. (I’m not sure why, but it’s colourful and different.) She focusses particularly on the practical route to fusion power generation, with a lot on JET and ITER.
There are some issues. Apart from one slip-up (neutrons are negatively charged in one of the illustrations), the content is fine, but I would have liked a bit more on the quantum physics of fusion – it’s perfectly possible to present it to this age group, and to skip over it is quite sad. (Also slightly surprised there is nothing about helium-3 fusion.) But the big problem is the format. The chapters follow Windridge’s tour around the UK giving talks in schools and each section begins with an update on her location. These really aren’t very interesting unless you were there. Then, each chapter has a different topic, but these seem totally random without any structure. It’s as if a series of blog posts had been stuck together (which is, in fact, what it is). It would have been so much better if the time and effort had been put in to give it a more sensible and accessible structure.
Overall, then, lots of good stuff in here, and at just about the right level for the audience, but the structure could do with some work.
The aim is to give the intended audience of GCSE and upwards students some background in nuclear fusion and a feel for the long slog we face to develop a fusion reactor. Melanie Windridge provides plenty of good information on fusion – mostly tokomaks, but one chapter on inertial confinement (the mega laser zapping method more favoured in the US). She puts her information across in a friendly, informal fashion and some of the illustrations are delightful – a flipbook animation of plasma disruption in a tokomak, for instance, and illustrations of atoms with grapes for electrons, peaches for protons and apples for neutrons. (I’m not sure why, but it’s colourful and different.) She focusses particularly on the practical route to fusion power generation, with a lot on JET and ITER.
There are some issues. Apart from one slip-up (neutrons are negatively charged in one of the illustrations), the content is fine, but I would have liked a bit more on the quantum physics of fusion – it’s perfectly possible to present it to this age group, and to skip over it is quite sad. (Also slightly surprised there is nothing about helium-3 fusion.) But the big problem is the format. The chapters follow Windridge’s tour around the UK giving talks in schools and each section begins with an update on her location. These really aren’t very interesting unless you were there. Then, each chapter has a different topic, but these seem totally random without any structure. It’s as if a series of blog posts had been stuck together (which is, in fact, what it is). It would have been so much better if the time and effort had been put in to give it a more sensible and accessible structure.
Overall, then, lots of good stuff in here, and at just about the right level for the audience, but the structure could do with some work.
Displaying 1 of 1 review