Chapter 10, Problem 6RQ

1. 6. In the 1950s, a team at Los Alamos National Laboratories built several devices they called “Perhapsatrons,” thinking that PERHAPS they might be able to create controllable nuclear fusion. After several years of experiments, they were never able to maintain a stable plasma and abandoned the project.

The perhapsatron used a toroidal (doughnut-shaped) plasma confinement chamber, similar to those used in more modern Tokamak fusion devices. You have taken a job at a fusion research lab, and your supervisor asks you to develop a simple spreadsheet to calculate the volume of a torus within which the plasma will be contained in a new experimental reactor.

1. a. Create a simple calculator to allow the user to type in the radius of the tube (r) in meters and the radius of the torus (R) in meters and display the volume in cubic meters.
2. b. Data validation should be used to assure that R > r in part (a).
3. c. Create a table that calculates the volumes of various toruses with specific values for r and R. The tube radii (r) should range from 5 centimeters to 100 centimeters in increments of 5 centimeters. The torus radii (R) should range from 1.5 meters to 3 meters in increments of 0.1 meters.

The volume of a torus can be determined using V = 2π²Rr². A sample worksheet for parts (a) and (b) is shown here.