David Hahn Essay

Abi Sivatharman
Sister Cecilia
AP Physics I
2015
David Hahn David Hahn was a typical seventeen year old boy scout who had grown up in the small town of Golf Manor, Michigan. It wasn’t until the day that suited men from the Environmental Protection Agency came to his house, raiding his makeshift lab in the backyard, for his self-deemed project to gain national recognition and reveal exactly what his obsession turned into- a homemade nuclear reactor. Since the early age of four, David Hahn began satisfying his fascination for science by going through the house and mixing various substances with liquid drainer, thus causing a reaction. However, he did not tell anyone about what he did, in which turned into a repetitive pattern that evidently
His parents soon divorced, mainly because of his mother’s - Patty Hahn- mental illnesses. Around the time of the beginning of space exploration itself, Ken gave David his first science book, The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, which was consequently one of the main influences of David’s decision to build a nuclear reactor. He read the book from front to back constantly as well as performed many of its experiments. However, the book did not present many precautions to be taken for the harmful substances used in the experiments shown, such as an experiment of homemade chloroform, an anesthetic, performed by David, still at a very young age. Although the book advised to smell carefully, David inhaled too much of the gas and passed out. This incident is considered minor, compared to times when David’s fascination turned into an obsession when he found himself unable to retain enough information from science books, and thus began seeking ways to improve himself mentally, such as taking certain steroids. Because David could not focus on anything but science, he began to neglect
He discovered that tritium, which was obtainable in night vision gun sights, was his best solution, and as he let the gun fire periodically for several days, his Geiger counter indicated that radioactive emissions were indeed growing, indicating that the Thorium- 232 were successfully accepting neutrons to turn into Uranium-233. Therefore, he was successful in his project to create a nuclear reactor. But, the first major problem that he ran into after his success was that he did not have a way to neither turn on nor turn off the reactor. He then structured a system of control rods made up of cobalt in order to control the nuclear fission occurring. Once David finally saw just how far the radiation was being emitted throughout the entire neighborhood, it frightened him, so he completely broken down his reactor and hid the individual parts in jars around his house. When someone called the police reporting stolen tires, they found David and searched his car, finding odd objects in his trunk such as clocks and chemicals, of which he warned were radioactive. Although he was jailed, he was not charged, but the parts of the nuclear reactor and his wooden shed lab were