High school student Thiago Olson has gone beyond basic physics class. Way beyond. Using parts and materials scrounged from the local hardware story and eBay, Olson built a working fusion reactor. In November 2006, a few tiny bubbles in his neutron dosimeter told him that he'd achieved success: Fusing hydrogen nuclei into helium.
While it takes far more energy to run than it produces, Olson's nuclear reactor is pretty bad-ass, producing 200 million-degree plasma at its core -- or, as Olson points out, “several times hotter than the core of the sun.”
Now that's an impressive hack.
