Domain: madehow.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to madehow.com.
Comments · 12
-
Re:What do you expect?
Because it's not submerged in the water ?
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-...
You are thinking of an immersion heater.
-
Re:That's the point
That's right: it's always coming for everyone's jobs.
Thanks for injecting some common sense into the typical "Technology is replacing workers!" hysteria. Technology introduces efficiency, and helps to reduce cost. Reduced cost usually translates to reduces prices as well, and increased demand. The classic example is the straight pin. A pin factory used to be able to make 5,000 pins a day. When automation was introduced, they were able to create about 70,000 pins per day. Prices dropped, demand increased and the net effect was more people working in the pin industry.
-
66000 tons of CO2 would produce 126000 Tons NaHCO3
66000 tons is 59874192840 grams of CO2 Divide by the molecular weight of CO2 of 44g/mole or 1360777110 moles of CO2 per year If this process uses teh standard process of converting CO2 to NaHCO3 CO2 + 2 NaOH -> Na2CO3 + H20 Na2CO3 + CO2 + H2O -> 2NaHCO3 Then for every mole of CO2 converted there is also 1 mole of NaHCO3 which has a molecular weight of 88 grams per mole so Converting 66000 tons of CO2 to NaHCO3 will result in 1360777110 moles * 84 g/Mole = 114305277240 grams NaHCO3 or 126,000 tons per year According to http://www.madehow.com/Volume-... only 32000 tons were sold in 1990 a decrease from previous sales So the NaHCO3 produced from THIS ONE PLANT WOULD INCREASE THE WORLD NEED FOR SALES BY NEARLY 400% so yep we are going to be burying this NaHCO3 SOMEWHERE THERE IS NO MARKET AT THIS TIME
-
Re:Why is everything so difficult for Americans?
The chip, the machines to make the chips, the plastics, the microprocessor, the communications protocols, the error correction, the networking, the programming languages, etc.
The chip:
If you mean "the notion of a microprocessor", that might well be a US invention, although the particular chip used in the first "smart cards" was, I think, originally developed by Bull, a French company.
The machines to make the chips:
Yes, probably originally developed in the US.
The plastics:
If you mean "the plastics from which credit cards are made", that's probably polyvinyl chloride acetate; PVC was originally a German discovery, although it appears that a US company may have been the first to make it a practical plastic.
However, if PVCA is an enabling technology for smart cards, so are "arabic" numerals, an invention from India; it's as much an enabling technology for "dumb" cards, and, as such, not particularly relevant.
The microprocessor:
See above, for "the chip">
The communications protocols:
Are you certain that the particular protocols used for chip cards, or EMV cards in particular, were a US invention? The "M" and "V" in "EMV" were US companies, but the "E" stands for "EuroPay", and the protocols might have been based on European protocols used prior to that.
The error correction:
Which particular ECC is used?
The networking:
To which networking are you referring? The one between the payment terminal and whatever host it talks to?
The programming languages:
OK, what programming languages are used? Pascal had better not be one of them, given that it was a European creation.
-
Re:the economics don't work out
It is actually worse.
How do you make silicon? On earth, we reduce silicon dioxide at high temperatures in the presence of carbon and produce more or less pure silicon and carbon monoxide. Additional processes are required to purify the silicon enough to make PV cells.
Ref: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-...
So you need quite a bit of carbon to make pure silicon metal from silicon dioxide. Very little carbon is available on the moon. So you either need to import a lot of carbon to the moon (there go your cost savings on launch costs) or you need to invent a new process for refining silicon from silica.
So no, it won't work.
-
Re:Face palm.
Idiot. Alright - WTF is in that suit that people haven't been preserving for hundreds of years already? Seriously - why is the suit so much more complicated and expensive? Half a million dollars. WTF is going on here?
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-...
You tell me - what is in that suit that is so very difficult to preserve? Mostly, it's composed of various kinds of plastic. Preservation for plastic? Avoid direct sunlight - and ???? You might go over them with something like Armorall now and then. The early suits had cotton linings in them - which probably wouldn't like to be Armorall'd very much. Hmmm - zip out the linings, and clean them separately?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... -
Re:Easy
The cutting thing is common knowledge, though I did simplify a bit for the sake of making my point. Here's the top link from Google if you search for "LCD manufacturing process". Here's the second link from Google if you want a better description of how it applies to TFTs and the like. The short version is that they decide on a density, manufacture accordingly, then cut, fill with liquid crystal, and wire up.
As for manufacturers making 1080p at various sizes, I completely agree. That was the whole point I was making, since that's the reason they have difficulty achieving economies of scale. Apple has managed to achieve that sort of economy by standardizing on two densities for their entire iPhone line. Similarly, their iPad line is standardized on two densities. That allows them to use the same substrate for millions of devices and thus save on having to maintain manufacturing lines that can handle a variety of substrates at various densities.
-
Re:What the hell?
Completely wrong. HFCS is produced from acid hydrolysis of starch to glucose followed by glucose isomerase treatment of a pure glucose solution in a fixed or fluidized bed enzyme reactor.
Enzyme content should be very low.
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Corn-Syrup.html
I don't know where you are getting your info but that source should be treated as untrustworthy.
-
Re:Yours for $3.99 + S&H
Or, one can just learn how they are made for free.
-
Re:Edison, Newton, Einstein....Because the history books would get too large if you included everybody? Julius Braunsdorf had invented an electric light long before Edison, but he is mostly forgotten, and people are taught that the electric light was thought impossible before Edison invented it.
No. History books tend to include enough information concerning major inventions to show that "invention" is an incremental process. People's oral summaries of the history books or history itself tends grossly oversimplify issues because, at a minimum, they have to match the level of detail to the level of interest in order to hold the listener(s)."When he announced that he intended to produce an electric light that would compete with gaslight, the stock prices of gaslight companies tumbled as their executives panicked. Many people, most notably Sir Joseph Swan, had tried to invent an electric light using an incandescent filament, or wire, enclosed in a glass bulb, but had not been able to create a filament that could withstand intense heat over long enough periods oftime to be practical. Even Edison had a tough time of it, going through a long, trial-and-error process in which he tested thousands of materials. Undaunted by failures, Edison finally found that a scorched cotton thread would work best. When heated in a vacuum, it produced a white glow without melting, evaporating, or breaking. Although Swan came up with a similar light bulb around the same time, Edison patented his idea more aggressively, promoted his product more effectively, and sketched out a practical system of power supply which could support its use on a large scale. On New Year's Eve of 1879, Edisongave a public demonstration of the new bulb, lighting up his laboratory anda half mile of streets in Menlo Park before of thousands of spectators. Edison had not only invented an economical light source, but developed an entire system for generating and distributing electricity from a central power station." "History book"
Humphry Davy is cursing your name in the afterlife because you've fixated on this Braunsdorf character who merely improved upon pre-existing arc lights. There's another horde of people who likely long before that overloaded a wire, but didn't run off to tell the world how to make a short lived flash of light by screwing up in an impractical manner.
Do you want to know what Thomas Edison invented? Read U.S. Patent No. 223,898.. Most importantly, look at claim 1:
1. An electric lamp for giving light by incandescence, consisting of a filiment of carbon of high resistance, made as described, and secured to metallic wires, as set forth.
My public school taught that Edison invented the first practical incandecent bulb by trying several thousand types of materials, not that Edison invented the first electric light. I'm very willing to bet that yours taught something similar as well, but you've oversimplified the information, whether you ment to or not. -
Re:Isn't that how they make ball bearings?
No.
-
Re:Dry ice
Dry Ice is a by-product of the air products industry. Air is cooled to condense it. Valuable gasses are fractionaly distilled out such as Oxygen, Argon, etc. CO2 is mostly a byproduct of the process. It is one of the reasons it is relatively cheap in bulk compaired to the other gasses. The bulk of air is Nitrogen. It is cheap enough to be used as a refrigerant in addition to being used for it's chemical properties.
Argon is a valuable inert gass used in welding and manufacturing. Oxygen is valuable in medical, manufacturing and welding. By comparison CO2 and Nitrogen are surplus gasses left over from the manufacturing process. CO2 and water must be removed ahead of time so the solids do not plug the plumbing. (Helium comes from natural gas. It's too rare in the atmosphere to distill commercialy. It is present in natural gas as a by-product of radioactive decay.)
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Oxygen.html
"Most commercial oxygen is produced using a variation of the cryogenic distillation process originally developed in 1895. This process produces oxygen that is 99+% pure. More recently, the more energy-efficient vacuum swing adsorption process has been used for a limited number of applications that do not require oxygen with more than 90-93% purity."
"Because this process utilizes an extremely cold cryogenic section to separate the air, all impurities that might solidify--such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, and certain heavy hydrocarbons--must first be removed to prevent them from freezing and plugging the cryogenic piping."