• Question: How did you add another electron? Did you have to put it under intense heat?

    Asked by Clownfish to Scott on 8 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Scott Lawrie

      Scott Lawrie answered on 8 Mar 2016:

      Hello again Clownfish! Good question: you’re asking about what happens in my Ion Source.

      It’s very tricky to add another electron to an atom. It will stick there, but the atom isn’t happy about it so tries to shrug it off! In fact, heating it up will make it fall off even faster, so we need to get it quite cold (compared to the rest of the super-hot plasma in the Ion Source that it’s born in!)

      We force the extra electron onto the atom by squeezing them tight together with strong magnetic and electric fields. We also make all the atoms bump into each other to try and shake an electron off one and onto another!

      It’s all very clever, difficult and fun… and a bit like magic, so we sometimes call it ‘Ion Sourcery’!

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