Science Fair Season Excerpt

The first thing that struck me about Taylor Wilson was that he was tiny. At fourteen, his ninety-five-pound frame swam in his T-shirt and jeans. Blond hair framed his blue eyes in a bowl cut. His voice was high as a choirboy’s, made even more adorable by his polite Southern drawl. Yes, ma’am, this is my first year participating in science fairs. Yes, ma’am, I’m having a wonderful time.

Taylor was one of the first competitors I met at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2009. I was drawn to him for the same reason I gravitate toward puppies and Pokemon characters: Taylor was cute. Only as I spoke with Taylor about his research—and he started trotting out more ominous words like uranium, terrorism, and fissionable radioisotopes—did I come to the distinct realization that Taylor probably hated being called cute. Taylor wanted to be taken seriously. He was out to prove that kids could do amazing things if they set their minds to it. At first, I admit, I was skeptical. His parents, Kenneth and Tiffany, were once skeptical, too. That all changed one day four years earlier when Taylor invited them into the backyard to see what he’d built.

As Kenneth and Tiffany obligingly followed their son outside, Taylor proudly presented a plastic pill bottle, stuffed with sugar and some of his dad’s stump remover. Stump remover, Taylor had read online, contained potassium nitrate, and potassium nitrate mixed with sugar will explode when lit. Poking out of the top of the pill bottle was a fuse. With a flourish, Taylor struck a match. It all happened so fast that Kenneth and Tiffany didn’t know what to think. The pill bottle, after all, was so small. Even if it did explode, there was no way it could do any serious damage, right?

Within seconds, there was a thunderous clap. Even the neighbors heard it, and they came running outside in a panic. As they turned toward the Wilsons’ backyard, they saw a miniature mushroom cloud rise toward the sky. It was small as far as mushroom clouds go. But then again, Taylor was ten. And what his parents didn’t realize yet was that he was determined to build something bigger.

As far as I could see, Taylor came from a nice, mild, down-to-earth Southern family. Kenneth, a tall man with sandy hair and an easy smile, worked in sales at Coca-Cola. Tiffany, who was willowy and soft-spoken, taught yoga and ran a health food store. They lived in Texarkana, a tiny town that straddles the border between Texas and Arkansas, and had two other children—Ashlee, nineteen, and Joey, eleven.

Before building bombs, Taylor’s niche was family entertainer. He sang constantly, even in school, and danced in a style all his own, his arms and legs whirling like the blades of a helicopter. Taylor progressed through the typical stages of what a boy wants to be in life, although the intensity with which he pursued these interests struck his parents as extreme. At age three, he fell in love with construction gear. For Christmas, he asked for a hard hat, fluorescent vest, and orange cones—real ones, Taylor detested toys—and used them to direct traffic on his street (which, thankfully, moved at a snail’s pace). At age seven, he decided to become an astronaut. Up in his bedroom went a poster showing every rocket ever made by NASA and the Russians, from the 1930s onward. Within days, Taylor could recite this list by heart.

At age ten, Taylor received a gift from his grandmother that, in hindsight, she probably regrets giving him to this day. The Radioactive Boy Scout was a true story about a teenage boy named David Hahn who, in the early 1990s, tried to build a nuclear reactor in a potting shed in his backyard. Given that the boy nearly nuked his entire neighborhood before the Environmental Protection Agency arrived in hazmat suits to dismantle his operation, the book was clearly a cautionary tale: Don’t try this at home, kids. Still, in Taylor’s mind, it was hard to ignore the fact that this book also taught kids that if they did try, they could build a nuclear reactor. That is, if they were smart enough to figure it out.

Up next to Taylor’s poster of NASA rockets went a periodic table of the elements. Within days, Taylor could rattle off their atomic numbers, masses, and melting points like most boys recite memorized baseball statistics. While Taylor was familiar with many of the elements already—hydrogen, helium, calcium, copper—he was particularly taken with the thirty-four at the bottom of the chart, since they all shared one interesting trait: They were highly radioactive. Some rang a bell with Taylor already, like uranium and plutonium. Others were more exotic. Polonium was used to poison Russian spy Alexander Litvenenko. Radium was once imbibed as an aphrodisiac, before its adverse health effects became known and it was pulled from the market. Certain elements higher up on the periodic table, while not being exclusively radioactive, came in radioactive forms called radioisotopes. Hydrogen, for example, had a radioisotope called tritium. Unlike hydrogen, whose nucleus contained one proton, tritium’s nucleus contained one proton and two neutrons, which broke down and gave off radiation.

Taylor learned that radiation was all around him, and that while some of it was dangerous, a lot of it was not. He was surrounded, for instance, by radiation emanating from the earth and outer space, known as background radiation. Potassium, an element found in your garden-variety banana, was also radioactive, as were Brazil nuts. Some vintage dishes were painted with a radioactive uranium glaze, although the people who ate off them seldom knew and were no worse for the wear. Many forms of radiation were also helpful. Radiation could cure cancer and x-ray broken bones. Radiation could be used for good or evil. It could save millions of lives or destroy them with the push of a button.

Taylor was fascinated. By what? He wasn’t sure exactly. Maybe it was that atoms seemed so small and unassuming, but possessed amazing powers, much like Taylor himself. For whatever reason, Taylor wanted to know more. But first, he would need his dad’s help.

“Hey, Dad. Could I get a Geiger counter?”

Texarkana is a small town, and Taylor’s dad, Kenneth, is a friendly guy. He knew plenty of his neighbors on a first-name basis, and one of them happened to be the man who ran Texarkana’s Office of Emergency Management. In addition to protecting the town’s citizens from storms, floods, and flu outbreaks, the office was also responsible for detecting nuclear threats. As such, Taylor reasoned, the office must have an old Geiger counter lying around, most likely gathering dust. If so, might Taylor be able to borrow it?

This question, like most questions Taylor was asking these days, made Kenneth uneasy. Still, not one to deny his son anything without mulling it over, Kenneth made the call. To his relief, his friend in emergency management said yes, they did have a Geiger counter, and no, unless Taylor was really creative, he’d have a hard time hurting himself with it. Hearing this, Kenneth figured there was little harm in indulging his son’s request. After all, where in Texarkana would Taylor find anything radioactive enough to make the Geiger counter work?

Days later, a Geiger counter about the size of a lunch box was sitting in Taylor’s lap. He and his mom, Tiffany, were driving to Hot Springs, a nearby town known for being the hometown of former President Clinton. Antique shops dotted the tree-lined streets, and while Taylor had never expressed any interest in antiquing before, Tiffany was happy to humor him. As they poked around dusty corners filled with ornate armoires and Vienna clocks, Taylor kept his eyes peeled for orange pottery known as Fiestaware. Once he spotted a stack of plates, Taylor made a beeline toward it.

One thing that few people know about Fiestaware is that the orange glaze painted on it contains uranium. Fiestaware, as a result, is radioactive. No matter how old this pottery gets or how much dust it collects, it emits a steady stream of subatomic particles that a Geiger counter detects with a series of clicks. The faster the clicks, the closer and stronger the radiation source. As Taylor approached the plates, his Geiger counter started clicking. Once he got within arm’s reach, the clicks kicked into high gear, melding into a constant rrrrrrrrr that got the shop owner craning his neck toward the back of the store to see what was going on.

“Your pottery’s radioactive,” Taylor triumphantly informed the shop owner, who appeared confused, and then somewhat relieved when Taylor left the store, plate in hand. Taylor had landed his first radioactive item, but his collecting spree didn’t end there. After scaring every antique shop owner in town, he hit hardware stores, having learned that some smoke detectors contained a radioactive element called americium, and camping lanterns another called thorium. On sites like eBay, there was no end to the oddities Taylor could purchase. Radon sniffers, nuclear fuel pellets, lead pigs, and spinthariscopes soon rounded out his collection. Even though Taylor was still “borrowing” a Geiger counter from the Arkansas Office of Emergency Management, he acquired thirty Geiger counters, of varying abilities. One, called the Super Scintillator, was so sensitive that the military used it to detect radiation levels on the ground from a plane. Back when it was manufactured in 1955, it cost $1,995, the same price as a Chevy.

For two years, Taylor’s collection grew. But even then, he wasn’t happy. He didn’t just want to have radioactive items; he wanted to experiment with them. And that would mean he’d have to embark on his biggest challenge yet: building a Farnsworth fusor.

Philo Farnsworth was born in 1906 and grew up on a farm in Beaver County, Utah. At age twelve, he built his family a mechanical washing machine. At fourteen, he conceived of the television, and he invented the first working model seven years later. Farnsworth should be famous. But lack of money, combined with a patent dispute with RCA, muddled his name in obscurity. Philo continued inventing, and by his death, he had accumulated 165 patents. One of his last, which barely made a blip on most people’s radar, was called the Farnsworth fusor.

True to its name, the Farnsworth fusor fused atoms together. Ever since the discovery of fusion, scientists had hailed its potential as a “clean” energy source, since it produced much smaller amounts of radiation than fission, or the splitting of atoms. The biggest hurdle to achieving this goal was that immense amounts of energy were required to fuse atoms together; then, the energy given off was hard to recover. In short, energy input exceeded output. For fifty years, scientists spent billions of dollars trying to reverse this dynamic. But so far they’re still scratching their heads.

In the 1990s, nuclear hobbyists called “fusioneers” began building fusion reactors in their garages and basements. On the Internet site Fusor.net, they swapped parts and advice, much like vintage car enthusiasts might trade maintenance tips and engine components. While a few fusioneers chipped away at unlocking the secret to clean energy, far more built fusors for their by-product: neutrons. Neutrons, a form of radiation given off during fusion, served as the building block to an array of nuclear experiments. Shoot neutrons into topaz—a mineral that, in its natural form, is often brown in color—and you turn it blue. Pelt an oil painting with neutrons, and it can help you determine the chemical makeup of the paint without damaging it, which is useful for identifying fakes. Neutrons also have plenty of commercial uses, like the production of radioisotopes, which can be used in radiation therapy and as medical tracers. Any fusioneer who dreams of dabbling needs a steady supply of neutrons, and building a nuclear fusion reactor is his ticket.

Among those who embarked on this quest, there was a pecking order. The rookies were part of the “Scroungers List,” those who were assembling parts. The next step up was the “Plasma Club,” which included individuals who’d built a “demo fusor” that could create plasma, considered a stepping-stone to fusion. The highest echelon members could reach was the “Neutron Club,” which meant an individual had built a fusor that could successfully fuse atoms together and produce neutrons. In 1999, the Neutron Club had two members. In 2001, three new members were added. By the time Taylor stumbled across this list in 2007, there were thirty people worldwide in the Neutron Club. Taylor, at age twelve, vowed to become the thirty-first.

Taylor started emailing Fusor.net members, asking for spare parts and advice. As was the case with any potentially dangerous hobby, Fusor.net’s members were wary of newcomers, and twelve-year-old kids were a particularly worrisome presence. Some argued their site put children at risk. Others argued that giving advice was a safer alternative to withholding it and letting kids fumble around on their own. Taylor’s grasp of nuclear physics struck a few members as unique.

Eventually Taylor’s queries caught the eye of one Neutron Club member named Carl Willis. Carl, a twenty-seven-year-old grad student living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, looked like the type of buttoned-down, bespectacled young man most would be glad to invite to dinner. And yet, at age twelve, Carl had built his first explosive out of Clorox bleach. During college, he whipped up a batch of gunpowder and tried drying it in the dormitory microwave. Within seconds, a fireball erupted from the machine, prompting a mass evacuation and a flurry of concern about his experiments. The college chemistry department, sensing Carl would continue with or without their help, gave him twenty-four-hour access to their facilities, which seemed safer than letting him tinker around in his dorm room. In the lab, with guidance, Carl’s talents took off. At age twenty-two, he built a nuclear fusion reactor and became the tenth inductee into the Neutron Club.

While Carl had been lucky enough to find a few mentors who cultivated his interests, the majority of adults in his life viewed his activities as something deviant that should be discouraged. So when he spotted Taylor’s pleas, Carl felt compelled to help. He started emailing Taylor relevant papers. Over time, emails turned into phone calls, and phone calls into joint field trips. The twosome toured Bayo Canyon in New Mexico, where test explosions of radioactive material were conducted in the 1940s. They toured the LANSCE particle accelerator in Los Alamos, where Carl had interned one summer. They compared their collections of radioactive items; Taylor’s rare finds often made Carl envious. Carl, though, had one thing that Taylor did not: a nuclear fusion reactor. Carl was a card-carrying member of the Neutron Club, while Taylor was just a lowly Scrounger.

Carl knew that many Scroungers eventually gave up. He didn’t want to see that happen to Taylor. And so, as a gesture of his faith in his friend’s abilities, Carl approached his boss. Carl worked at a company that manufactured particle accelerators. Sitting in their storage room was a high-voltage power supply—a crucial component to building a fusor and a prohibitively expensive piece of the puzzle, given that new ones cost $5,000 to $10,000. Taylor had searched high and low and had yet to get his hands on one.

“I know someone who could really use that high-voltage supply,” Carl said to his boss. His boss hemmed and hawed, but with more wheedling, he handed it over. Upon hearing what Carl had acquired for him, Taylor was thrilled. Now that he had this key component, the question remained: Where would he get the rest of the parts?

The answer, Taylor would be surprised to find, was hiding in Reno, Nevada.

Tucked between the casinos, strip clubs, and bars of Reno, there was a hidden enclave of kids who didn’t fit in anywhere else. Max Oswald-Sells, at age three, had learned how to read without being taught the alphabet. Misha Raffiee, at age two, had begun playing the violin, and at twelve she became the youngest musician on contract with the Reno Philharmonic Orchestra. Every day at school, Max and Misha sat alongside chess champions, math whizzes, and spelling wunderkinds. While their talents ran the gamut, the one thing these kids all had in common was that they were brilliant—so brilliant, it was sometimes debilitating. Before coming to Reno, Max had been teased and beaten on the playground. In class, he had been bored to tears. His mother, who’d already allowed Max to skip kindergarten, was at a loss about what to do. So when she heard that a school called the Davidson Academy, in Reno, might be able to help, it didn’t matter that she lived in Sydney, Australia. She booked their tickets.

In many ways, the Davidson Academy looked like any other small public school. Lockers lined the hallways. Outside, kids played soccer during recess. And yet the school’s founders, Jan and Bob Davidson, had a very unique agenda in mind for their students. The Davidsons, who lived near Reno, had made their fortune in the educational software business. Now, as full-time philanthropists, they wanted to reach out to kids who desperately needed their help: the nation’s brightest. In this No Child Left Behind era, they noticed, schools were spending the majority of their time and resources bringing kids at the bottom of the grade curve up to par. Meanwhile, the needs of kids at the top were being all but ignored, and they were tuning out—and dropping out—in droves. While statistics varied, one study suggested that as many as one-fifth of high school dropouts scored in the top 1 percent on achievement tests.

Since 1999, the Davidsons had been helping these kids find support and resources with which to excel. Still, since these families were scattered all over the world, they began clamoring for a school, saying they’d happily move so their kids could attend. In 2006, after finding a suitable location on the University of Nevada Reno campus, the Davidsons opened the Davidson Academy and began calling for applicants. To qualify, kids had to score in the top 99.9th percentile on an SAT, ACT, or IQ test. Classes would be free, since the academy was a public school, the first of its kind in the country. In an effort to encourage students to proceed at their own pace, there were no grade levels. Instead, kids were grouped by ability and interests rather than age. It was a novel idea, a science experiment in its own right, a veritable petri dish of budding Einsteins, Beethovens, and Da Vincis.

Back in Texarkana, Arkansas, the Wilsons were pondering whether they should make the move to Reno. Kenneth and Tiffany had heard about the Davidson Academy after their daughter, Ashlee, stumbled across an article about it in Time magazine. “Taylor and Joey might like this,” Ashlee told her parents, who figured there was little harm in letting their boys apply. They had a hunch their sons were smart, but doubted their sons were that smart. Yet when both Taylor’s and Joey’s IQ test results came back in the 99.9th percentile, the Wilsons had to face the fact that their kids really were different—and, in Taylor’s case, perhaps even dangerous.

The Wilsons had prayed that radioactivity was just a phase. But over the past four years, Taylor’s obsession had grown, and it scared them. More worrisome still, Taylor’s interest in school had begun to wane. Even though he consistently came home with straight A’s, he slept through class. At home, he had amassed a sizable pile of pieces required to build a nuclear fusion reactor. Sooner or later, he would put them together and turn it on. What then?

Rather than sit tight and find out, the Wilsons packed their bags. In Reno, Taylor would meet another man who, like Carl Willis, would take him under his wing.

As far back as the 1980s, if a tech company went belly-up, you could bet that Bill Brinsmead would arrive on the scene to clean up the mess. After receiving an inside tip that so-and-so firm was closing its doors, Bill would rent the largest Ryder rental van he could find, drive it all night, and pull up at the company’s loading dock. Then he would hop out, shoot the breeze with the security guard, and meander through the abandoned hallways, scrounging for parts. Bill was a senior engineering technician at the University of Nevada in Reno, and the university desperately needed a new computer lab. Why pay top dollar for new equipment when startup companies were crumbling and willing to unload their outcasts for free?

Bill, a former military man with a brawny build, shaggy hair, and shaggier mustache, had earned the nickname the “Pirate from Nevada” since he tended to plunder the spoils swiftly and leave nothing behind. Occasionally, he arrived so quickly after heads had rolled that he’d spot half-eaten hamburgers sitting on desks next to dried-up cups of coffee. Given that many of the items Bill hoped to take weighed thousands of pounds, he often brought buddies to help him shoulder the load, but even then it was backbreaking work. After he’d removed the goods, Bill would politely sweep the area—an added touch that kept him in guards’ good graces and all but guaranteed he’d get another phone call as soon as the next company crashed.

In many ways, Bill was nothing more than a high-end janitor removing extremely expensive trash. But through the years, he had outfitted the University of Nevada with some surprising prize finds. Once, he nabbed a machine from Hewlett-Packard that gold-plated semiconductors. By recruiting some physics students to help him dismantle the carcass, he managed to extract $30,000 of gold from the machine, which he used to outfit his university with a departmental server. Another time, Bill arrived on campus towing an electric bus, which he turned into a mobile science Exploratorium that made the rounds to local schools. Bill’s biggest find, which required three railcars and two eighteen-wheelers to tow home, was a pulsed power generator called a Zebra, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which was turned into a new research branch on campus called the Nevada Terawatt Facility. Whenever Bill’s finds didn’t have an immediate use, they went into storage until a purpose could be found for them. When certain administrators complained about the clutter, Bill would step in and guard his turf. Someday, he’d point out, that Conflat fixture could come in handy.

Outside of work, Bill also enjoyed scavenging at government auctions for parts to funnel into his personal projects. Among these projects were electric vehicles, or EVs, including a little red electric sports car that could accelerate up to one hundred miles per hour. Since Bill was a die-hard fan of Burning Man, a week-long annual art festival held in the middle of the northern Nevada desert, he’d built an EV just for the occasion: a ten-foot-long replica of the atom bomb Little Boy, topped with a Western saddle. Every year, Bill rode Little Boy through Burning Man in homage to the movie Dr. Strangelove, in which a B-52 pilot saddles up an atom bomb and rides it straight down to Russia. Bill had a healthy sense of humor when it came to nukes. That’s why the Davidson Academy was banking that he’d be the perfect match as a mentor for Taylor.

Weeks before this odd duo met face-to-face, Bill had received emails from Taylor saying he would soon be attending the Davidson Academy and that he hoped to build a nuclear fusion reactor with Bill’s help. At first glance, Taylor’s emails were so steeped in sophisticated terminology, Bill assumed someone must be pulling his leg. Come on, I wasn’t born yesterday, he thought. Who’s this kid’s ghostwriter? After meeting face-to-face with him, Bill wondered whether Taylor was biting off more than he could chew. Still, Bill was reminded of a time back when he was about Taylor’s age, stuck sitting in science class, feeling bored and frustrated. Gifted programs were available for reading and math, but there was no such thing as a gifted program for science. Most of his teachers had no idea how to help him build the things he dreamed of building. In eighth grade, Bill managed to piece together a laser, which he entered in his middle school science fair. He lost to a girl who’d fed her guinea pigs vitamin C, and who had put together a prettier poster. Soon after that, Bill’s interest in science fairs ground to a grudging halt.

Now, staring down at Taylor thirty-odd years later, Bill had a choice. He could steer this kid toward a science fair project more appropriate for his age, like a hydrogen car. Or he could see if he and this kid could create something really, really cool.

“You’re on, kid,” Bill said. “Let’s go take a look at my collection and see what we’ve got.”

Bill and Taylor meandered from room to room, scanning shelves, grabbing pieces of scrap metal. “This’ll work . . . this’ll work . . . ,” Bill mumbled occasionally, consulting Taylor when he needed more specifics. They piled their finds in the university’s subbasement, which was deemed the safest place to start putting these things together. Around the area where they’d be conducting their experiments, they erected a shield made of paraffin and lead, which would absorb any radiation the experiments might produce. Since lead dividers were expensive, Bill came up with a cheaper makeshift alternative: old gel cell batteries from computer power supplies, stacked one on top of the other like bricks.

Once their workspace was up and running, a radiation safety officer stopped by occasionally to assess whether the precautions they were taking were up to snuff. As an added precaution, Taylor and Bill wore dosimeters, which were badges worn by nuclear power plant workers that measured the amount of radiation they’d been exposed to. Taylor, due to his small size and age, was allowed only about half the radiation exposure levels allowed an adult. Just to stay on the safe side, Bill occasionally stuffed Taylor behind him, turning his own body into a makeshift human shield.

After months of researching and welding, they’d assembled a gleaming mass of metal that looked like a cappuccino maker on steroids. Its cylindrical trunk consisted of a reaction chamber, an airtight environment that would serve as the stage for their experiments. Attached were vacuum pumps to remove unnecessary air molecules, fans to keep the machinery from overheating, and last but not least, a tiny window so they could see what was going on inside. Hovering front and center in this window was a Ping-Pong ball–sized framework of wires known as the grid, which was attached to the high-voltage power supply, compliments of Carl Willis. Once everything was in place, it was time to turn the contraption on. Only then would Taylor know whether he could ascend from the lowly ranks of the Scroungers List to the next tier: the Plasma Club.

Taylor had already had some experience with plasma. It had happened at lunchtime, around a month earlier, in the Davidson Academy cafeteria. Taylor, as usual, was eating healthy, a habit that came as a surprise to his classmates, given his other proclivities. That day, he had special plans for one particular item of food on his plate: a grape. As his fellow classmates munched their sandwiches and looked on with mild curiosity, Taylor sliced the grape in half, stuck it in the microwave, and turned it on. While most onlookers assumed that he would end up with a warm grape, Taylor knew better. Within seconds, a fireball formed above the grape, glowing purple.

Grapes, due to their size, shape, and electrolyte content, are great at absorbing and amplifying microwaves, a form of radiation. If placed in the right spot in a microwave, grapes can produce a fourth state of matter known as plasma. Plasma consists of ionized gas, which means the electrons within it roam free from the nucleus they’re typically bound to. Stars and lightning are made of plasma, but Taylor had just demonstrated that plasma could also be created through man-made means. His classmates were impressed. His teachers administered a gentle scolding (“No more grapes in the microwave, Taylor”). Now all he needed to do was create those same special effects inside his fusor.

Creating plasma within a fusor was a similar process to the grape-in-the-microwave trick, only instead of a grape, Taylor would be ionizing argon gas, and at much higher voltage levels. As Bill filled the fusor with argon and flipped the switch, Taylor peered through the window into the reaction chamber. At first, all he could see were the tungsten wires of the grid, glowing red. Then, as they amped up the voltage, Taylor saw a bluish haze coalesce around the grid, hovering in midair, like a ghost. This was plasma. Knowing no one would believe him without proof, Taylor snapped some photos, then posted them on Fusor.net. Congratulations poured in, first from Carl Willis, then others. Taylor was part of the Plasma Club and was beginning to earn its members’ respect.

A few days later, after tightening a few screws and fine-tuning a few pieces of equipment, Taylor and Bill turned the fusor on again. Only this time, rather than peering into the reaction chamber window, they scooted behind the lead wall they’d erected. That’s because this time, they’d loaded the fusor with a different gas, called deuterium. Deuterium, unlike argon, is a fusable gas. That meant that if all went well, Taylor wouldn’t merely be creating a blue ball of plasma. That ball of plasma would go the extra mile. The atoms inside it would fuse together.

Fusion is the process that powers the stars. On the sun, hydrogen atoms fuse together to form helium, releasing energy in the process. Replicating this reaction on earth, though, is no easy task. The main problem, Taylor knew, was that atoms don’t want to fuse together. Get two of them close enough, and their positively charged nuclei repel one another, like the positive ends of two magnets. Stars use their sheer mass and high temperatures to squeeze atoms together, but Taylor had neither of these brute forces at his disposal. What he did have was his grid, which had two key things going for it. Due to the high voltage levels running through it, it could strip electrons from the nuclei of atoms and form plasma. The grid could also amass a powerful negative charge, much like one end of a battery. Negative charges attract positive ones, and nuclei stripped of their electrons are positive. As a result, the nuclei within the plasma cloud would shoot inward, toward the grid. Some would hit the grid and be absorbed, but others would shoot right through toward the grid’s empty center. Essentially, Taylor was masterminding a miniature nuclei pileup. If the speed of the nuclei were fast enough, some of them would crash and stick. They’d fuse together.

Fusion, surprisingly, is a quiet process. There are no big bangs or explosions. The only sound Taylor and Bill could hear from behind the lead wall was a bit of crackling from the electricity source and a couple of blips from a nearby computer. Only after they’d turned off the power supply and rounded the lead wall would they know whether their efforts had been successful, due to a tiny device they’d placed near the fusor called a bubble dosimeter.

When deuterium atoms fuse, they kick out neutrons as a by-product. These neutrons, while small, carry energy that, if it collides with a bubble dosimeter, can heat the substance inside it (typically Freon) to the boiling point. The result: bubbles. If Taylor saw bubbles in his bubble dosimeter, that would mean he’d created neutrons, and that would mean he’d caused deuterium atoms to fuse together. And that would mean that after four years of scrounging for parts, worrying his parents, and moving across the country, Taylor could finally say it was all worth it.

Taylor picked up the bubble dosimeter and squinted at it: one bubble. He wasn’t sure whether to be elated or angry. Was one measly bubble enough to gain entrée into the Neutron Club? Taylor didn’t want to leave any room for doubt. Rather than show the bubble to Bill, Taylor suggested they run the fusor again. This time, when they picked up the dosimeter, they counted five bubbles. Five was enough to convince the harshest critic.

That night, Taylor posted proof of his breakthrough on Fusor.net, where he was promptly proclaimed the thirty-first—and youngest—nuclear hobbyist in the world to build a Farnsworth fusor. Taylor’s parents, upon hearing the news, celebrated by taking him out to dinner. His teachers suggested that he enter his fusor in the regional science fair, which was coming up in a few weeks.

At the regional science fair, when Taylor and Bill wheeled the fusor into the convention hall, Bill had to chuckle as hordes of students stopped, stared, and tried to figure out what it was. The project’s title—“Subcritical Neutron Multiplication in a 2.5 MeV Neutron Flux”—didn’t help much. The words nuclear reactor rippled through the crowd, followed by radiation poisoning, gamma rays, and more whispering. Better give that booth a wide berth. Competitors simultaneously resigned themselves to winning second place at best. Bringing a fusor to a science fair was like bringing a Ferrari to a go-cart race.

At the awards ceremony, Taylor won first place and a spot as a finalist at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2009. As luck would have it, the competition would be held in Reno that year. Bill was relieved. That would mean he could drive Taylor’s project to the convention center in his electric van, rather than fly it in on a plane. Who knew what airline security would have thought if they’d laid eyes on a nuclear fusion reactor.

Soon after meeting Taylor, I picked up a copy of The Radioactive Boy Scout, the book that had launched his quest four years earlier. Reading this book, I was struck by the fact that its main character, David Hahn, was a lot like Taylor. David was in his teens, and obsessed with radioactivity, and determined to build a nuclear reactor no matter what it took. So far, this description fit Taylor to a tee. But at this point, their paths diverged. David’s efforts were shut down by teams in hazmat suits. Taylor’s story could have a happy ending.

“Exactly,” Taylor agreed with me. “Every nuclear scientist I meet who’s read that book always says, ‘You’re the ending we wanted to see to that book.’ ”

Taylor, like David, had the potential of turning into a parent’s worst nightmare. Only Taylor didn’t, and the reason for this boiled down to one crucial difference: support. David was alone, angry, bored, and brilliant. It was only a matter of time before his efforts veered into dangerous territory. Taylor, on the other hand, did not build his nuclear fusion reactor alone. A quirky grad student named Carl Willis had given him the necessary know-how. A buccaneering technician named Bill Brinsmead had pitched in the parts to put it together. Philanthropists Jan and Bob Davidson had noticed that the nation’s brightest kids were falling through the cracks, and opened a school to cultivate their unique talents. And last but not least, Taylor’s infinitely patient parents, Kenneth and Tiffany, hadn’t stood in his way, even though every instinct they had as parents screamed they should slam on the brakes.

All of these people were willing to set their skepticism aside and believe that a kid could do amazing things if given a chance. And after hearing his story, I believed Taylor could, too. He had tons of people rooting for him. We had extended our trust and placed our bets.

Now all Taylor had to do to prove us right was win.