Why I Built a Particle Accelerator in High School

 Going into my junior year at Westbrook High School in Westbrook, Connecticut — a small school with about 200 students — I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do with my life. What I did know was that I wanted to try something big. Something difficult. Something that would force me to figure out whether I actually enjoyed a field instead of just thinking I liked it. 

I’ve always liked the idea of aiming unreasonably high. Even if you fall short, you usually land higher than you would have if you aimed low. 

A few months into the year, my physics teacher casually mentioned the Connecticut Science and Engineering Fair (CSEF) and jokingly threw out “build a particle accelerator” as an example project. It was meant as a joke. Unfortunately (or fortunately), it stuck with me. 

At the time, I barely knew any real physics. I had just watched some cool YouTube videos about accelerators and quantum mechanics — not the technical kind, just the mind-blowing conceptual stuff that makes the universe feel weird and exciting. But the idea felt impossible enough to be interesting. If someone thought it was theoretically possible, I figured maybe I should try. 

After class I told my teacher I actually wanted to build one. He laughed. I didn’t. 

When he realized I was serious, he offered to sketch a rough design. From that point on, things escalated quickly. Over the next year and a half I taught myself about accelerators, high voltage, vacuum systems, CAD, machining, detectors, and fundraising — mostly by trial, error, and stubborn persistence. 

Looking back now, it’s honestly hilarious how little I knew compared to what I understand today. I had plenty of misconceptions, shaky physics intuition, and very questionable early design decisions. But I had an unreasonable amount of motivation, and that turned out to be enough to keep things moving. 

Two weeks before the science fair deadline, I still didn’t have a working vacuum system, detector, or Van de Graaff generator. At that point my teachers let me essentially live in the lab. I spent about fourteen straight days working from 7am to 7pm, soldering, machining, sealing vacuum leaks, and debugging everything that could possibly go wrong. 

Two days before the report was due, the beam finally turned on. 

I measured a 6 µA electron beam current using a homemade Faraday plate, stared at the screen for a long time to make sure it wasn’t lying, and then immediately panicked because I still had to write the paper. 

Those final days were exhausting, chaotic, and unbelievably exciting. Looking back, that stretch completely changed the direction of my life — and it all started because of a joke in physics class. 

Now, after much bigger projects and much higher voltages, I can confidently say that some of the most meaningful things I’ve ever done started as playful, unrealistic ideas. 

The report above documents the accelerator system I built at the time. If you have physics experience beyond high school, you’ll probably notice that my theoretical understanding was… ambitious. 

I had plenty of misconceptions about electric fields, nuclear processes, and circuits — but I knew just enough to make the machine work, although maybe not safely.  And somehow, that was enough to launch everything that came next.