“Burning Plasma” Ice Cream

Margaret E. Fairborn¹, Ishaan Mishra²

¹Columbia Fusion Research Center, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027
²Plasma Dynamics Modeling Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305

Abstract

Fusion energy is a promising option for enabling humanity’s burgeoning electric power requirements. Challenges in plasma physics and engineering have persisted, limiting our ability to create and sustain a “burning plasma,” where more power is produced than inputted to sustain fusion reactions. Ice cream, on the other hand, is a well-studied and ubiquitous technology. In this article, we explore the intersection of these two fields.

Ingredients

Bulk Plasma

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup whole milk
• a bit less than 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 vanilla bean

Neutral Beam

• ~1/4 cup Ghirardelli white chocolate chips
• Splash (1/2 tsp) of canola oil

Fusion Products

• 283 g (10 oz) Raspberry Jam
• 2x Jalapeños
• Some red chilli powder

Eroded Wall Material

• 2x Walker’s All-Butter Shortbread Rounds

Procedure

Bulk Plasma

• Split the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds out.
• Add the bean and the seeds to a heavy-bottomed medium-sized pot.
• Add all the bulk plasma ingredients to the pot.
• Put it on medium-high heat and remove it when it starts to steam. Stir occasionally to make sure skin doesn’t form on the surface. Also diffusion isn’t good enough to spread the sugar out at this time scale.
• Remove the vanilla bean and transfer the base to a container. Place it in the fridge for ~2 hours.

Fusion Products

• Dice the jalapeños.
• Add 1/4 cup of jam and add it to a small saucepan. Heat it till it gets to a simmer then turn off the heat.
• Add the diced jalapeños and the rest of the jam. Mix it.
• Strain out the jalapeños. Add red chilli powder to taste (as much as you’d like, we did ~3 tsp).
• Keep refrigerated till ready to use.

Ignition (putting it all together)

• Crush the cookies and keep them aside.
• Add the ice cream base to an ice cream machine. Let it do its thing till it’s ready. The ice cream should reach the consistency of a smoothie made of frozen things.
• Add the white chocolate chips and canola oil to a microwave-safe bowl and heat in a microwave for 30 seconds. Mix it up.
• Gradually stream the white chocolate into the ice cream machine. This creates flakes of white chocolate throughout the ice cream. This is like Stracciatella but with white chocolate (see figure 1).

• Once the white chocolate is added, remove the base from the ice cream machine.
• Now, we layer the ice cream, spiced jam, and cookies (say, n layers). The first layer is shown in figure 2.
• In your final ice cream container (preferable tokamak/stellarator-shaped), add 1/(n+1) of the jam and cookies to the bottom of the container, followed up 1/n of the ice cream. Stir a bit with a knife/chopstick for marbling.

• Repeat this process till you have 1/(n+1) fractions of jam and cookie crumbs. Add the remaining jam and stir. Then, sprinkle the cookie crumbs as in Figure 3 and store the container in the freezer. Let it sit for at least 1 hour but not longer than 1 week.
• Enjoy!

Results

The fusion facility gain is given by

Q_facility = enjoyment score out ÷ | enjoyment score in |

Table 1: Activity Enjoyment Scores (including serial numbers)

Sl. No.	Activity	Enjoyment Score (10% uncertainty)
1	Commuting	-1
2	Buying Ingredients	-5
3	Preparation	-2
4	Eating	154.1
5	Manuscript Writing	-5
6	Dishes	-10

Thus, we find that

Q_facility = 6.7 ± 0.8.

Future Work

The intersection of ice cream and fusion was successfully studied. While we gained a lot of enjoyment from this project (Q_facility >1), the ice cream was on the sweeter side. Future iterations of this experiment could involve homemade raspberry jam, or replace the jam with a raspberry-jalapeño sorbet. In addition, we intend to utilize novel computational methods in simulating plasmas to inform the development of future fusion reactors and spacecraft propulsion systems.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Alexandra Lachmann for fruitful discussions. This project was funded by the authors’ checking accounts.

References

1. Moon-Neitzel M., Spittler C. “Molly Moon’s Homemade Ice Cream.” Sasquatch Books. (2012).
2. Malek T., Goode J.J. “Salt & Straw Ice Cream Cookbook.” Clarkson Potter Publishers. (2019).
3. Pitts R.A, et al. “Material Erosion and Migration in Tokamaks.” Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion 47 B303. (2005).