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Editorial methodology

This page explains how each section of the site was produced, so a reader can judge how much weight to give it. The short version: most of the technical content here is faithfully extracted and cited, not independently validated. Where that distinction matters — and for anything safety-critical it always matters — the details below say exactly what was done and what was not.

How the Design Guide was made

The Design Guide’s 634 rules were machine-extracted from roughly 64 source documents of the accelerator literature by AI extraction agents working in two passes: a first pass over documents with usable text layers, and a second pass over a dozen scanned classics that were freshly OCR’d for the purpose. Each rule carries the formula where its source gives one, a verbatim quote, a page-level citation, and an applicability note calibrated to a tabletop-class machine. Quotes and numbers were checked against page images wherever the OCR looked suspect — a check that earns its keep: in one case a detector bias voltage OCR’d an order of magnitude too high and was caught only against the page image.

Be clear about what this process produces. The rules are source extracts: faithful to their sources, but not independently validated engineering requirements. No one has re-derived each formula, rebuilt each machine, or reconciled the whole set into a consistent specification. Sources span eight decades; some are old, some describe one specific machine, some simplify, and some contradict each other. Transcription errors can also survive spot-checking. Any rule that drives a real design decision should be re-read at the cited page of the source before you rely on it.

How the Library was indexed and scored

The Library is an annotated index of 201 documents. Each entry is scored on two editorial axes: amateur relevance (how useful the document is to someone designing or building a small cyclotron) and hands-on (concrete engineering content versus pure theory). The scores and annotations are editorial summaries — a reading lens, not a measure of a document’s scholarly quality. No documents are hosted here; outbound links are added only where a document is legitimately available (DOI, OSTI, arXiv, publisher, or open archive), and each link is verified before it is added.

The Legal survey is multi-source desk research. The federal layer and all 51 US jurisdictions (50 states plus DC) were independently verified against the current text of the relevant statutes and regulations, as of August 2026. Where secondary sources disagree with each other or with the statute, the survey presents the more conservative reading. It is a dated snapshot of published law, compiled by non-lawyers: it is information, not legal advice, and anyone planning an actual machine should confirm requirements with the cited regulator.

How Locations data is verified

The Locations database is hand-curated against primary sources — facility websites, operator publications, and international registries. Facilities change status quietly, so each record carries a last-verified date in the source data, and entries not re-verified within five years are flagged there rather than silently presented as current.

How calculators are validated

Each calculator states the physical model it implements, lists its assumptions and limits of validity, and links the derivation. Before publication each was checked against worked numerical examples with known answers — textbook cases and published machine parameters. They are design-study tools built on standard, cited physics; they do not replace detailed engineering analysis of a real machine.

Status vocabulary

To keep the site’s claims exactly as strong as they deserve to be, technical content is described with four status terms:

  • source extract — faithfully extracted from a cited source, quote and citation preserved; not independently checked beyond OCR/transcription spot-checks. This is the current status of every rule in the Design Guide.
  • editor-checked — additionally verified by the site’s editorial process: numbers recomputed, links and citations confirmed, or claims cross-checked against a second source. Calculators, the legal survey, and outbound links are in this category.
  • independently reviewed — reviewed by a qualified person unaffiliated with the site’s production. No content currently carries this status.
  • field-validated — confirmed against a real, operating machine. No content currently carries this status.

Today, everything technical on this site is source extract or editor-checked. The vocabulary exists so that if content is ever upgraded — an independent review, a validation against a running machine — the upgrade will be visible and dated, rather than implied by tone.

AI disclosure

The extraction of design rules, the indexing of the library, and the assembly of this site were performed with AI assistance, working under editorial rules that require every claim to keep its source citation and every safety bound to take the conservative reading where sources disagree. AI extraction is what made a corpus of this size and citation density practical; it is also why the Design Guide’s rules are labeled source extracts rather than validated requirements, and why every rule tells you exactly which page to verify it against.

Corrections

Errors reported to [email protected] are corrected in place, and substantive corrections are noted in the changelog. Reader corrections are welcome and credited on request.