The Boy Who Played with Fusion: Extreme Science, Extreme Parenting, and How to Make a Star

by Tom Clynes

Overview

This story of a child prodigy and his unique upbringing is “an engrossing journey to the outer realms of science and parenting” (Paul Greenberg, author of Four Fish).
 
A PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Finalist
 
Like many young children, Taylor Wilson dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Only Wilson mastered the science of rocket propulsion by the age of nine. When he was eleven, he tried to cure his grandmother’s cancer—and discovered new ways to produce medical isotopes. Then, at fourteen, Wilson became the youngest person in history to achieve nuclear fusion, building a 500-million-degree reactor—in his parents’ garage.
 
In The Boy Who Played with Fusion, science journalist Tom Clynes narrates Wilson’s extraordinary story. Born in Texarkana, Arkansas, Wilson quickly displayed an advanced intellect. Recognizing their son’s abilities and the limitations of their local schools, his parents took a bold leap and moved the family to Reno, Nevada. There, Wilson could attend a unique public high school created specifically for academic superstars. Wilson is now designing devices to prevent terrorists from shipping radioactive material and inspiring a new generation to take on the challenges of science.
 
If you’re wondering how someone so young can achieve so much, The Boy Who Played with Fusion has the answer. Along the way, Clynes’ narrative teaches parents, teachers, and society how and why we urgently need to support high-achieving kids.
 
“An essential contribution to our understanding of the most important underlying questions about the development of giftedness, talent, creativity, and intelligence.” —Psychology Today
 
“A compelling study of the thrills—and burdens—of being born with an alpha intellect.” —Financial Times
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780544084742
Publisher:	Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication date:	04/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	16 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Tom Clynes writes regularly for National Geographic and Popular Science, where he is a contributing editor. His work has also appeared in Men's Journal,Nature, New York, the Sunday Times Magazine (London), the Washington Post, and many other publications. He is also the author of the book Wild Planet!

Read an Excerpt

1
 
The Digger
 
When I first meet Taylor Wilson he is sixteen and busy—far too busy, he says, to pursue a driver’s license. And so he rides shotgun as his father, Kenneth, zigzags the family’s Land Rover up a steep trail in Nevada’s Virginia Mountains.
    From the back seat, I can see Taylor’s gull-like profile, the almost unwavering line from his sandy-blond bangs to his forehead to his prominent nose. His thinness gives him a wraithlike appearance, but when he’s lit up about something (as he is most waking moments), he does not seem frail. He has spent the past two hours—the past few days, really—talking, analyzing, breathlessly evangelizing about nukes. We’ve gone back to the big bang and forward to mutually assured destruction and nuclear winter. In between are fission and fusion, Einstein and Oppenheimer, Chernobyl and Fukushima, matter and antimatter.
    Kenneth steers the SUV past a herd of wild mustangs as we climb a series of progressively rougher and narrower dirt roads. This is the third time Taylor has coaxed his dad to these mountains so that he can beef up his collection of uranium ore—part of a broader stockpile of radioactive materials that the teenager has built into one of the most extensive in the world. Kenneth steers around a switchback, flushing a pair of quail, then halts the SUV in front of a small hole dug into the side of a mountain.
    “Whoa, wait a minute,” Taylor says, throwing open his door.
    He leaps out and sprints toward the mine entrance, which is barricaded by a shiny new chainlink fence. “This was my mine!” he shouts. “It was my mine, and they fenced it off!”
    The Bureau of Mine Safety has hung a sign on the fence: DANGER: UNSAFE MINE—STAY OUT, STAY ALIVE. The smaller print lists some of the dangers in abandoned mines: bad air, rattlesnakes, old explosives, rotten timbers, falling rocks.
    “Okay, now, y’all ignore that,” Taylor says, calming. He turns toward the truck to fetch the gear, scoffing. “Like any mine is going to be safe.”
    Taylor “discovered” the Red Bluff Mine the previous year while rifling through a 1953 geology thesis complete with fading Polaroid photos stapled to yellowing paper that he’d found in a forsaken corner of a library at the University of Nevada. Though the mine produced ore commercially for just a few years, the dirt that it cuts through still coughs up, Taylor says, “some of the hottest rocks in Nevada.”
    Taylor unloads a pickax and a shovel, flashlights, and three types of Geiger counter. He chides his dad for forgetting his radiation-detecting wristwatch and his ore-collecting buckets—“Looks like we’ll have to be resourceful,” he says—and heads for the fence.
    He hoists himself lightly over the top, and Kenneth and I hand the gear to him and then clamber over the chainlink ourselves. When we enter the mine, the Geiger counter’s ticking quickens slightly. It’s late autumn and unseasonably warm—a good thing, since on warm days uranium mines tend to “exhale” radioactive radon gas generated by uranium’s natural decay. In cooler weather, mines “hold their breath,” as Taylor puts it, keeping more radon inside.
    Taylor fills me in on mine terminology. The Red Bluff opening is an adit, meaning it enters the side of the mountain roughly horizontally (as opposed to a shaft, which enters a mountain at a vertical or steep incline). The darkness pulls in around us as we duck our heads and step inside; I can sense the weight of the mountain above. Swinging our flashlights, we see bats hanging on the support timbers, and rat feces scattered on the ground. (Unmentioned on the sign is the potentially fatal hantavirus, spread via rodent urine and droppings.)
    We reach a winze, a side tunnel that angles steeply downward. Though winzes can drop hundreds of feet, Taylor’s light follows a sloping plywood chute to another adit only six feet below. He reaches down with his Geiger counter’s probe, and the ticking picks up considerably.
    “Something interesting down there,” he says, already handing his light and radiation detector to his dad. He hops onto the wooden chute and slides down; Kenneth passes the gear to Taylor and we slide down after him.
    Taylor quickly finds the radiation source. It’s a yellow vein of uranium running diagonally along the brown wall of the tunnel, crossed by a greenish trickle of water. When we move our lights away from the stream, it continues to glow faintly. “Ooh, man, radioactive water,” Taylor says as he shifts his flashlight beam from side to side, studying the tiny green-gold river from all angles, transfixed. I find myself watching his fascination with a fascination of my own.
    “Liquid uranium,” the teenager says. “I wonder if it’s coming off some autunite up above. It’s a fluorescent mineral, hydrated calcium uranyl phosphate; pretty rare ’round here.”
    We continue deeper into the tunnel until we reach a frail-looking brace. Taylor inspects the rotted wooden beams and cross brace, then shines his light down the curving passageway; the tunnel’s end is out of sight.
    “We might-could go back farther,” Taylor says, using one of the double-modal expressions that attest to his Southern roots. “But it looks unstable to me.” Kenneth gratefully concurs, and we retrace our path toward the blast of daylight that meets us at the mine’s entrance. Once outside, Taylor climbs the fence and hoists his leg over. As he does, his Geiger counter probe brushes his thigh and emits a loud squawk.
    “Huh?” he says. “What’s going on with my leg?” He hops down and runs the probe up and down his jeans. The detector shrieks. He looks worried.
    “My pant legs are highly radioactive,” he says. “This is actually scaring me.” He climbs down the other side of the fence and quickly unbuckles his belt. “Uh, Dad, can you run and get the pancake probe real quick?” he says, yanking his belt from its loops and quickly pulling off shoes and jeans. He’s standing in his boxer shorts when Kenneth trots back from the Land Rover with the more sensitive instrument. Taylor snatches it from his father’s hands and runs the large, flat disk along his bare leg. When it doesn’t bleep, Taylor looks relieved. He goes over to the SUV and tests the seats, which are clean. Then he gingerly lifts his jeans and scans them. Halfway down the right thigh, the detector picks up the contamination, an invisible oval patch three or four inches long.
    “It’s not alpha radiation, which should rule out the mine as a source,” Taylor says. “But it also rules out my pants shielding me. I could have absorbed a significant dose. That’s kind of embarrassing.” He holds the pants up to the sun. “I don’t get it. They were clean this morning when I put ’em on. My skin’s not radioactive, so it’s not loose contamination, which makes me think it’s been on the pants for a while. But—how? Generally, my jeans are not radioactive to start the day.”
    “Where does it come from?” Kenneth says a few minutes later as we sit in a shady nook watching Taylor dig through the mine’s tailings pile. It’s a question that Kenneth and Tiffany have asked themselves many times. Kenneth is a Coca-Cola bottler, a skier, an ex–football player. Tiffany is a yoga instructor.
    “Neither of us knows a dang thing about science,” Kenneth says.
    “Sweet Jesus!” Taylor yells from atop the mound of yellow earth. “This is exceedingly radioactive dirt!” He’s wearing my spare shorts now, the bunched-up waist cinched, with his belt, around his slender torso. His pickax and shovel lie on the ground next to the clicking Geiger counter as Taylor claws with his hands through the dirt. He bends from his waist, knees locked, his thin, sun-deprived legs descending through swirls of yellow dust and landing inside untied sneakers.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Part I

1 The Digger 3

2 The Pre-Nuclear Family 10

3 Propulsion! 16

4 Space Camp 22

5 The "Responsible" Radioactive Boy Scout 28

Part II

6 The Cookie Jar 39

7 In the (Glowing) Footsteps of Giants 46

8 Alpha, Beta, Gamma 54

9 Trust but Verify 64

10 Extreme Parenting 71

11 Accelerating Toward Big Science 77

12 Heavy Water 86

13 Bright as the Sun 91

Part III

14 Bringing the Stars Down to Earth 101

15 Roots of Prodigiousness 110

16 The Lucky Donkey Theory 122

17 Twice as Nice, Half as Good 133

18 Atomic Travel 142

19 Champions for the Gifted 152

Part IV

20 A Hogwarts for Geniuses 161

21 A Fourth State of Grape 174

22 Heavy Metal Apron 182

23 Birth of a Star 190

24 The Neutron Club 202

Part V

25 A Field of Dreams, an Epiphany in a Box 215

26 The Father of All Bombs 227

27 We're Just Breathing Your Air 237

28 The Super Bowl of Science 245

29 Scotch Tape 258

Epilogue 273

Acknowledgments 282

Notes 285

Index 296

Editorial Reviews

"Here is the amazing story of an unbelievable boy — somebody who seems more like a figure out of fiction (science fiction, to be specific) than reality. But the story is true, the boy is true, and the science is true. And the world that opens up to us through his story is both fascinating and slightly terrifying...but in a good way. You won't be able to walk away from this tale." --Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and The Signature of All Things


"Imagine if cartoon whiz-kid Jimmy Neutron were real and had a brainchild with MacGyver and his adolescence got told as a rollicking bildungsroman about American prodigies and DIY nuclear reactors—well, that’s this book."  --Jack Hitt, author of Bunch of Amateurs.                              


"Clynes guides us on an engrossing journey to the outer realms of science and parenting, "The Boy Who Played with Fusion" is a fascinating exploration of "giftedness" and all its consequences. --Paul Greenberg, author of Four Fish and American Catch


Popular Science contributing editor Clynes (Music Festivals From Bach to Blues: A Travellers Guide, 1996, etc.) uses the story of Taylor Wilson—who, at age 14, became "one of only thirty-two individuals on the planet to build a working fusion reactor, a miniature sun on Earth"—to illustrate the potential for improving our educational system. "What does it take to identify and develop the raw material of talent and turn it into exceptional accomplishment? How do we parent and educate extraordinarily determined and intelligent children and help them reach their potential?" These are the questions the author seeks to answer in this enlightening book. Clynes first learned about Taylor in 2010 when he was interviewing members of a small community of "nuclear physics enthusiasts." At the time, Taylor was attending the Davidson Academy, an experimental secondary school in Reno that offered students the opportunity to attend classes at the University of Nevada-Reno. Taylor enrolled in physics seminars and had successfully completed a project to build a tabletop fusion reactor that allowed him to study the properties of different materials. The family had moved to Reno so that Taylor could take advantage of the Davidson opportunity. His father was a successful entrepreneur who had fostered Taylor's developing interest in science, beginning at age 6, with his fascination with rocket propulsion. Although he had no technical training himself, Wilson enlisted the help of more knowledgeable friends from the community to help his son safely pursue experiments with rockets. Clynes chronicles Taylor's development since their first meeting, during which time he invented a prototype for a "hundred-thousand-dollar tabletop nuclear fusion device that could produce medical isotopes as precisely as the multimillion-dollar cyclotron or linear accelerator facilities could," as well as a highly sensitive, low-dose device for identifying nuclear terrorists. Clynes makes a persuasive case for allowing gifted children the freedom and resources to pursue their interests.  ---KIRKUS Reviews

From the Publisher

2015-04-14
Popular Science contributing editor Clynes (Music Festivals From Bach to Blues: A Travellers Guide, 1996, etc.) uses the story of Taylor Wilson—who, at age 14, became "one of only thirty-two individuals on the planet to build a working fusion reactor, a miniature sun on Earth"—to illustrate the potential for improving our educational system. "What does it take to identify and develop the raw material of talent and turn it into exceptional accomplishment? How do we parent and educate extraordinarily determined and intelligent children and help them reach their potential?" These are the questions the author seeks to answer in this enlightening book. Clynes first learned about Taylor in 2010 when he was interviewing members of a small community of "nuclear physics enthusiasts." At the time, Taylor was attending the Davidson Academy, an experimental secondary school in Reno that offered students the opportunity to attend classes at the University of Nevada-Reno. Taylor enrolled in physics seminars and had successfully completed a project to build a tabletop fusion reactor that allowed him to study the properties of different materials. The family had moved to Reno so that Taylor could take advantage of the Davidson opportunity. His father was a successful entrepreneur who had fostered Taylor's developing interest in science, beginning at age 6, with his fascination with rocket propulsion. Although he had no technical training himself, Wilson enlisted the help of more knowledgeable friends from the community to help his son safely pursue experiments with rockets. Clynes chronicles Taylor's development since their first meeting, during which time he invented a prototype for a "hundred-thousand-dollar tabletop nuclear fusion device that could produce medical isotopes as precisely as the multimillion-dollar cyclotron or linear accelerator facilities could," as well as a highly sensitive, low-dose device for identifying nuclear terrorists. Clynes makes a persuasive case for allowing gifted children the freedom and resources to pursue their interests.

Kirkus Reviews