A tokamak is a doughnut-shaped magnetic plasma confinement device used for magnetic fusion energy production. It was invented in the 1950s by Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm and Andrei Sakharov. The tokamak uses plasma current to generate the magnetic field, while the stellarator uses external coils. The donut shape is necessary to avoid instability caused by the hairy ball theorem.
A tokamak is a toroidal (doughnut-shaped) magnetic plasma confinement device, the leading candidate for magnetic fusion energy production. The term tokamak comes from the Russian words: “toroidnaya”, “kamera” and “magnitnaya”, which mean “toroidal, chamber, magnetic”. The last letter g has been replaced by k to avoid the analogy with the word magic. It was invented in the 1950s by Igor Yevgenyevich Tamm and Andrei Sakharov.
The tokamak is characterized by the use of the plasma current to generate the helical component of the magnetic field necessary for stable equilibria. This can be compared to another toroidal magnetic confinement device, the stellarator, where all confinement magnetic fields are produced by external coils and there is negligible current flowing through the plasma.
Why donut shaped? The distinctive shape of the fusion reactor is needed because of a particular property of a donut that a sphere (for example) does not have. Basically the problem is the hairy ball theorem. If a sphere has hair growing, it is impossible to comb it so that no hair sticks out. However a hairy bun can be styled this way.
This is important because a fusion reactor is a fuzzy donut with hair representing magnetic field lines. A strand of hair standing on end would be an instability in the reactor.
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