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Water Computing
Andrew_Cronin writes "This is a nice project that some one did at MIT on building some logic computation systems without using electrons.. So why not use water..."
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Doesn't anyone know? Water and computers dont mix. Make up yuour mind. You can either make fun of water-cooling OR make computers out of water.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
.. how long until we see a computer constructed using bong water?
Here's the real aqua!
Brings new meaning to the term "Bit bucket"
Three dits, four dits, two dits, dah!
Radio, radio, rah rah rah!
I think it is a cool concept. EMP wouldn't be such a problem. Lugging the thing to a LAN party would. Imagine having to carry Hinkley and Schmidt as well as the device.
I have 3656.9 Bogomips. How many Bogomips do you have?
If you overclock it, can it cool itself?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Will we use electricity to cool it? Well water is a very effective cooler on electronics, so why not do it the reverse when your water is your 'electronics'?
p pp pppppppppp
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAPpp
YOUCH!!!!!
DAMN ME!!!!! THAT !*!@# HURTS.
Scratch that idea.
What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
He says without electronics, not without electrons... Last time I checked a molecule of water had, oh say about 10 electrons in it...
Either that or the Slashdot crew already crashed the "Water Computer". :))
So why not use water..."
Well, since the site is already slashdotted (only the title is showing up for me) i'll have to use all the power of my brain to guesstimate.
Why not use water? The answer is simple really. If you can use such liquids to proform logical computations then it would be adventageous to use a liquid with a VERY high boiling point to prevent all your data from boiling off into steam...
Hmmm... I can see it now "that data has to be uncompressed into steam, heat it up a bit."
burst into flames after the slashdotting.
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
So it is not exactly true that they
are computing without electrons.
I couldn't resist, sorry.
As we get closer and closer to microscoptic or at least very small computers, how long until the inevitable complex systems of neural nets combined with tiny computing devices self-organizes into something with capabilities outstripping an expert system... and into something like SkyNet in the Terminator movies?
The self-organization of a complex system into a self-aware artificial intelligence is a chaos theory wet dream.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
uh . . . this might be my fault. i told a bunch of people i tutored that electrons moved down a wire just like water moved down a pipe. it seemed to be the most effective analogy. but now someone has taken it too far!
track7.org has all kinds of interesting stuff!
Very cool, but I gotta ask two questions... 1) how to implement other operation: OR, NOT, etc. and 2) It looks like he lets the excess water simply run off... no method for collection or recycling.
Naturally, this brings to mind all sorts of jokes about computers that can finally REALLY do windows. Still, one wonders: What's so original about this? Who hasn't operated a steam-driven computer while playing Myst or Riven?
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
Now that i see the project itself, a thought came to me...
What if lego pulls a patent suit in order to only let children use them? Just think of all the tinkerers who will have to pay royalties in order to mount prototypes on legos... It's also quite funny to see a lego device hooked up with some tubes to this huge complex computer.
Scientific American had an article about water-based logic gates and circuits some decades ago. IIRC, they even created circuits that had no electronic analogy. I can find no reference to this on the web - perhaps some other science geek with access to a complete collection could find it. I believe it was in the Amateur Scientist, but it's been about fifteen years since I read through the stacks of magazines in the cabinets of my chemistry classroom, so I could be mistaken.
For a similar concept (ie, non-silicon machine logic) that I first read about in the pages of Scientific American, check out the Apraphulians here . For more info on this ancient race, Google is your friend.
I wonder if using water as a medium can allow it to do someoperations very efficiently, (at least in comparitive scale) operations like addition and subtraction might be accomplished through butting all of the water from cell one to cell two, or the greater then operations could involve wichever is heavier. I think it is an interesting way to look at the rudementury operations.
Google cache
I've considered water-based computation long ago, but hats off to this student for logic design and implementation. My idea was to have water push open another wate gate, much like a flow-controlled valve, allowing for a water-based transistor. Combine this with other transistors, and you can build virtually any gate--I take that back, any gate you want. XOR and AND are good choices, as with a XOR a you can get NOT, to make a NAND, and as we all know NAND is the Univesal Binary Gate.
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
I really remember seeing a documentary on how the russians tried using water logic for computations and got pretty good with it back in the 40's. Then again they did alot of cool stuff over in that part of the world. They actually managed to stick with 50's technology for 40 years. yay communism! I knew someone who had no more after the berlin wall came down just because his job was dependent upon the crappy stuff they made breaking down. Reliable products from the west caused alot of people to loose their jobs.
I know it's an off topic rant, wanna give me some points for being interesting anyway?
Maybe you cool a water computer with silicon? ;-) Sorry.
Looks like we "flooded" the server...
Hell, take that thing on a pub crawl and have your beer do it's own calculations of how much tip you should leave as it's on it's way down to your stomach!
Liberty.
combine this water pc into my water bed!! Now I can be use my pc in bed without one of those crappy wireless keyboards!
Nah, just build it into the toilet. Makes rebooting all that much more fun. Turn any public restroom into a beowulf cluster!
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
So, a beowulf cluster could flood a city block if it was OCed and burned out....
Now the guy can do basic logic, but this must be very slow. It is wonderfull seeing someone trying to educate people about computers. Most people have no idea what an XOR gate is, or a transistor for that matter. Well I wish him good luck.
Please ignore above troll
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
computer, bed, only one thing missing...p0rn? you must be into watersports!
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Why logic gates? you can go straight to integration and computing outcomes of complex systems using water in analog circuit - some uk bunch did it back in the 50's or so for modelling the economy - and was used for such - and was still better at numerical answers for the problem until well into the 70's.
The original Rollerball had one too. Don't remember it's name, but there was a main user interface of some kind that looked like a garganguan bubbling aquarium. None too reliable either; it misplaces the 14th century. "Ah well, only Dante and a few corrupt popes," as Ralph Richardson said at the time.
And the brethren went away edified.
How can people argue about this for so long!?!? If you really know nothing about chemistry, don't post about it.
Oxygen is element 8. It has 8 electrons. 6 of them are valence elecrons (in the 2s and 2p orbitals) and 2 of them are "core" electrons in the 1s orbital. Only the valence electrons get drawn in those dot diagrams, that's why you can only see six on some sites.
Hydrogen is element 1. It has 1 electron. This electron is in the 1s orbital.
Water is H2O, where the 2 is subscript. It has 2 hydrogens and one oxygen, with polar-covalent bonds between them, so there are 2*1+1*8=10 electrons. Two of them are in oxygen's 1s orbital, four of them are in two of oxygen's four sp3 hybrid orbitals, and four of them are shared between hydrogen's 1s orbital and the other two of oxygen's sp3 hybrids (one orbital and two electrons for each hydrogen).
Don't even get me started on sp3* anti-bonding pairs.
Sorry for being inconsistent as to whether numbers should be spelled out.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
I wonder if it would be possible to create such gates that function on water pressure changes. It's quite quick to propigate a wave through water. I'm talking about pressurizing water inside of the system, and then inducing shock waves from your inputs. Could you make gates that trigger on those pressure changes? You could probably get quite a few bps (by creating shock waves in the water) I wonder if you could just use plain old speakers to generate sound waves... I wonder what the attenuation characteristics of water are.
Probably the first "modern"computer, the Z1 (Germany, early 30's) used aluminum moving parts (!)but because of difficulties with these sort of parts, the Z2, Z3, Z4, and Z5 used electronic relays. (Z1 was destroyed by allied bombing).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
a not gate: an xor gate with true -- ie a constant stream -- applied to one input
an or gate: an and gate with not gates at each input and output -- or just join two streams with a simple junction
A recycling system is easily added. A more fundamental problem is that the gates are passive: there is no amplification. You can use gravity, but with feedback some lines will have to go upwards and need a complex pump for each line. Also you may need a lot of height per stage.
Fluid actuated valves would solve this problem, and would be more efficient. Only one pump would be needed -- as in electronics -- to provide the supply pressure. But in the simple case of a four-bit adder, it might be harder to make.
Inductance is the same as momentum. You could build a gadget that has a turbine in the water flow with a fly wheel attached. The gadget would resist water flow starting up, and would resist the water flow slowing down once it's moving. (same as an inductor fighting a change in current)
Capacitance is the same as a flexible membrane across the pipe, which will transmit AC changes in pressure, but not DC.
You could build a capacitor/inductor tuned circuit that either filters or passes certain frequency water waves
Also, water transistors should be fun. A small flow or pressure of water controls a larger flow or pressure (in either an analog or digital fashion)
It would be a way fun tool for teaching electronics.
Ben in DC
"It's the mark of an educated mind to be moved by statistics" Oscar Wilde
Every time I try to overclock it, all the circuits freeze up.
We're thinking of giving up on liquid nitrogen and trying liquid helium.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Many equations were solved with that fine machine.
better pipelining.
Slashdotting and UFie-ing (This was selected as the UF link of the day today), both at once.. shame, shame...
--j0shua
jumpin jeebus!
whats a fella gotta do to get modded down around here?
oh i know
the fonts on my win2k box look great, and it needs no outlook killer - i got the real thing
thank you
oh yeah, tux is lame, and ellen feiss symbolizes all that is and ever was macintosh
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Imagine overclocking this baby.. just hook it up to Hoover Dam and you'd be able to run Quake3 easy.. but then again, you better have a monitor with a water input.. and a keyboard and mouse with water out
"all kinds of things"
Can you name some others? I've always enjoyed thinking about doing computing in weird forms.
Education is the silver bullet.
But there's no gain.
a friend of mine in college (Aron) made a water adder capable of adding two 8-bit values -- all with water streams.
LINK
As the article states this is currently on display in the main entrance to the Boston science museum. it looks really darn cool but it just sits there, no demonstrations or anything. I think they are afraid any actual usage will break the thing. :/
Here's a better image of the contraption
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
... water analog computers have been used since 1949... till mid 80-x for modelling differential equations.
They were used for large-scale projects, such as modelling of water dams.
Didn't we just have a different "font" article?
I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation
... but I bet that in a few months, it'll all just turn out to be vaporware.
I remember reading an article (possibly in Scientific American or Science News) about making a DNA computer and using it to quickly solve the trip planning problem. It seemed a very cool hack but a long way from being practical.
On the other hand the speed of molecular reactions and their ability for massive parallelity (is that a word?) sounds like it would hold promise for certain types of computers.
This of course would leave Steve Jobs to insist that his MISC computers were much better even if they were a terahertz or so behind current Pentiums.
The MIT students didn't quite get it right. Their gadget doesn't seem to have gain. The key insight needed for fluidics is that a jet of fluid can be diverted with a smaller jet coming in from the side. This allows building a fluidic amplifier.
Once you have an amplifier, you can do switches, gates, flip-flops, and other logic elements. Analog control systems, with fluidic sensors and amplifiers driving pneumatic or hydraulic cylinders, are also possible. When the inputs and outputs are pneumatic or hydraulic, it's often convenient if the control system is, too. Fluidic elements are very reliable, too - there are no moving parts except the working fluid.
One wierd fluidic application is this kosher public address system.
The Bay Model in Sausalio is a huge water based analog computer. Check it out at the army page or this VR view.
...to the term core dump!
I wonder if this machine also has an overflow bit!?
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
(I say "calculators" because I think that computer is underrated).
I have studied about these machines at Uni (I studied in eastern Europe): they use fluids and analog pseudo-circuits to create things like integrators, adders etc. and are capable of solving systems of differential equations in real time. This kind of equations is still a non-trivial problem for digital computers.
However, with the advent of gigabit-clocked CPUs, these machines are definitely out. Their models are, sometimes, replicated in software, though.
Sigged!
Ohh, I just found another quote from the book that I once used in a software manual:
- Ray Girvan and Steve JonesMoney for nothing, pix for free
Hasn't anybody heard about the Phillips Machine, used for computing national economies?
r ai ns.shtml
The BBC has just done a radio program on Bill Phillips' invention. You can still hear it on
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/electronicb
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el bid
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el bid
Konrad Zues' Z1 and Z2 machines were built somewhat later but used many of the same ideas, only in a much more compact space.
Of course now we will have a bunch of idiot libertarians blasting Keynes. However Keynes and his computer are the reason why Britain pulled out of the depression before the war while in the US depression turned to slump. The problem came when Keynsianism became an idelology after his death, the solution to every problem was deficit spending, just like today some idiots think that the solution to every problem (including a deficit) is tax cuts.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Back in the early 80s, a colleague with aerodynamics experience built a device without mechanical handling parts for sorting pills based on fluidics. The inputs were amplified to the point at which they controlled air streams which moved the pills physically, the Bernouilli effect causing them to fly over the track like hard disk heads and so avoid contact damage, until a contrary air stream braked them as they landed in the output bins. The management got a demonstration, it worked perfectly, but guess who was first out the door when there were layoffs?
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
When I was a kid in school, one of the teachers found an old book on fluidic computing in the school library, and built a one bit adder, using stoppered flasks and glass and rubber tubing.
Old Singer sewing machines had fluidic computers that they used for switching systems.
Rocketdyne built a fluidic missile guidance system.
The Russians used fluidic computers back in the late 40's, early 50's.
Actually, if you do a patent search on "Alvin Snaper", you will find a number of fluidic computing patents (and the patent for the IBM Selectric ball).
-- Terry
I found an old book from the 50s about water logic on my father's bookshelf. He was an argriculture engineer that worked on advanced irrigation systems. I especially remember the flip-flops - they were actually simpler than the logic gates and consisted of a simple bifurcation of a water pipe. The water flow would tend to cling to one side or the other and could be flipped by a water pulse perpendicular to the flow.
In the 50s, nuclear engineering was in vogue. Water logic was perceived as the ideal solution for the control logic of nuclear power plants. Electronic components would fail too quickly because of the intense radiation.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
> A xor A=1
/.'s gay lameness filter(s). ;-)
Might want to re-check your math. That should be zero.
Here's a handy table to refer to which I've partially reproduced below, but in proper (ascending) binary order. You can do this enumeration to build truth tables for tertiary logic, and higher.
Notes:
1) Don't mind the table seperators - had to find some way to get around the
2) To lazy to fill in the names for '?'
A B | 0 N ? A ? B X R | r x b ? a ? n 1
----+ ================ ________________
0 0 | 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
0 1 | 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 | 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1
1 0 | 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 | 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1
1 1 | 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 | 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1
0 = Hardwired to false
1 = Hardwired to true
N = AND
A = Value of A
B = Value of B
X = XOR
R = OR
And the negates in "reverse" order:
r = NOR
x = XNOR
b = Negate B
a = Negate A
n = NAND
Funny thing is, I first saw this table in one of my Logic books!
This Electronic Truth Tables describes some of the un-named ones.
Cheers
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Funny Lameness filters:
That's an awful long string of letters there.
Please use fewer 'junk' characters.