Slashdot Mirror
Nanotech Pinball and Miniature Engines
glenmark writes "Researchers at the Solid State Electronics Laboratory at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed the world's smallest pinball game. The video is fascinating. The flippers are electrostatically-actuated monocrystalline silicon cantilevers. I hope Pat Lawlor and Steve Ritchie see this. I have a feeling they would get a kick out of it." And in another nanotech story, psmears writes "Three hundred times more powerful than ordinary batteries, but much lighter and smaller? Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid. Further information at Research-TV including photos and a film."
That thing sure is sensitive to tilt. A minor gravitational fluctuation sets it off.
This is great news! Just the other day, my boss discovered the worlds smallest game of pocket pool. If I bought him one of these pinball machines, he could have his own private arcade.
That's assuming he ever gets laid :p
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
Where is the quarter slot?
Trolling is a art,
Solid State Electronics Laboratory for the smallest balls known to exist!
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
the video compares the size of the MEMS pinball to a Swedish Safetyy match, a .5mm lead and a human hair. The comparison really gives great perspective!
KARMA TAG! You're it.
I love Space Cadet. It is the only pinball game I need.
Some people still do. They call them MPEGS.
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
"Hey, where do I put the quarter?!" - Michelangelo in the lab
Banaaaana!
"Rows and columns of tiny nano-pinball games" That sounds like I'm hallucinating quite badly.
"Electostatic actuation" - now maybe they could drive the music for it through nano-elctrostatic speakers:
"He's a nano wizard
There's got to be a spin
A nano wizard
S'got monocrystalline"
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
And the Tony goes to:
David Spade; the world's smallest pinball wizard.
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
Will the Diamond Age begin in our lifetimes?
I'm personally of the opinion that when the nanotech revolution starts, it'll happen so shockingly fast that applications, society and governance will take decades to catch up -- think internet x10.
In a world of pervasive nanotech, I suspect the next really big industry will be power generation; it'll require a step up in juice unlike any seen since the start of the century. Fortunately, nanotech will hopefully solve some technical problems (superconducting power transmission, materials suited to support fusion, etc) at the same time it's demanding this huge level of power generation.
Of course, in a world of pervasive nanotech, our existing governmental and societal structures are in a lot of trouble... We live, as the ancient Chinese said, in interesting times (and I mean that in the spirit in which they did).
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Now nano sized soldiers will have equipment to perfect their hand eye coordination before they launch their attack on mankind.
I'll let him know. He's my brother-in-law.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
seems to be /.ed -- I feel a little like Tommy...
I give up, some one get me when Elvis returns...
You are so going to be turning off your cell phone at the gas station now!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
I really wanted to see the video but, the site requires Windows or MAc with Internet Explorer, cookies enabled and Windows Media Player.
I don't want to see anything that bad.
When I tried to watch the film, I got this javascript "error":
There seems to be a problem with your system. Browser not Microsoft Internet Explorer
That's a problem?
We'll find WMD's in Iraq as soon as we plant them there.
Berkeley has been working on mini and micro rotary engines for a little while now. Rotaries are really better for this application as they have less moving parts. Their mini rotary engine is about the size of a penny while their micro rotary engine has a rotor of size 1mm! Rotaries have no valves which makes them much easier to produce at this size.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
I used to have a winbox, a linuxbox and now I have an Apple powerbook.
I don't recall great difficulties playing divx-files under any of these systems.
Perhaps you are still using DOS?
This would be great for furnishing the game room of the one-millionth scale model of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
"We'll find WMD's in Iraq as soon as we plant them there."
Stuff like this never happens. Or do you think that Elvis is over there right now flying around in a UFO planting WMD's as we speak? What else have you learned from the tinfoil hat?
"These micro-engines have over 300 times more energy than an ordinary battery" is meaningless. If they mean total energy delivery over whatever time period you like, then microengines can beat batteries by a factor of a million trillion zillion, as long as you hook them up to a big enough fuel tank. In actual power capacity, though, microengines aren't anything special at all, yet.
The aim is little turbines the size of a sugar cube that run from butane or propane or whatever, and have several watts of output power; prototypes of such things have been spinning for a while now. The microengines shown in the U of B release, though, are minuscule piston units which have power output in the microwatts, if that. Heck, the ones shown in the release don't even have generators attached to them, so their electrical output at the moment is zero!
For your amusement: A reader also pointed this out to me; it's a reprint of a piece on the subject from the British "Sun" tabloid, and it reads as if they took the U of B press release and put it through a Markov chain program, or something.
It's good to know that alcoholism in the press is alive and well.
And a new record for the fastest slashdotting of a University website... Insert obligatory joke about Nanoseconds here.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"These micro-engines have over 300 times more energy than an ordinary battery and are much lighter and smaller."
So a cellphone that needs a daily charging will now need a refill once a year?
I would wager that this claim carries a degree of exaggeration.
"I'm a loner Dottie, a rebel."
- Pee Wee Herman
C'mon people... you know the drill... anyone got one?
----- sXe
They must be running their website using the pinball machine too. I hope that they can keep all of those .'s from /. in play or their server will tilt.
I know you're just being a smartass, but actually I'd say that this thing is less susceptible to tilt and more to "surface" forces like friction and electrostatics compared to it's larger counterparts.
But nice gag all the same.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid.
Great. Now I can add my laptop and cell phone, along with nail clippers and wooden slupting tools, to list the of things you can be detained Airport Security guards can pull me out of line and strip search me down for...
on the other hand I wonder what MacGuyver could do with one of these, a pack of toothpicks and some loose sweater yarn...
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Oh, and thank you for noting.
I've been saving this up for a moment like this:
Ever since I heard of Unix
I've always had a ball,
From Berkeley up to Linux
I must've run 'em all;
But I ain't seen nothing like him
On systems large or small
That tired, squinting, blind kid
Sure makes a mean sys call!
He sits just like a statue,
Like part of the machine,
Feeling all the limits,
Knows what signals mean,
Hacks by intuition,
His process never stalls,
That tired, squinting, blind kid
Sure makes a mean sys call!
He's a Unix Wizard,
I just can't get the gist
A Unix wizard's
Got such a mental twist.
How do you think he does it?
I don't know!
What makes him so good?
Ain't got no distractions,
Don't hear no biffs or bells,
Don't see no lights a flashin'
Ignores his sense of smell,
Patches running kernels
Dumps no core at all,
That tired, squinting, blind kid
Sure makes a mean sys call!
I thought I was
The process table king,
But I've just handed
My root password to him.
Even on my own hot boxes,
His hacks can beat my best.
The network leads him in,
And he just does the rest.
He's got crazy Finger servers
Never will seg-fault...
That tired, squinting, blind kid
Sure makes a mean sys call!
science is a religion
He's a nano-pinball nano-wizard...
(Sounds like Mork from Ork joke eh?)
Slashdot is like Playboy: I read it for the articles
Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid AND power their computers with STEAM!!!
"VLC works just fine"
Indeed it does.
I also have mplayer, but I find VLC far better.
I have "installed" the Divx-codec for mac, but Quicktime seems to disregard it.
I prefer that the Divx codec is used over all that MS-mediaplayer crap. Although Xvid would even be better.
Puny humans!
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
Check out this rocking piece of nanotech.
Besides the seeming flammability risk, what about fumes?
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Javascript: 1.5 JavaScript needs to be enabled
in your "Internet Options"
to be able to use this site.
Please enable JavaScript and try again.
Browser: netscape
Platform: unix
Version: 5.0
Agent:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.4.19 i686; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130
Cookies: Enabled
WMP version: 0
Only Microsoft Internet Explorer supported currently
Please go to microsoft.com/downloads/
Probably not any exageration at all.
It's just very carefully selected semantical dodges.
It is talking about how much energy is contained inside these systems. (I'm assuming there's talking either per unit volume, or per unit mass. Other wise, well, it's totally meaningless).
That's a different number from how much energy you cet get out of the systems. In fact, my gut instinct is that they are comparing the energy you can get out of a battery to the total energy available from the fuel with the micro-engine. That's a false comparison either way, as the micro engine will not be 100 % efficent.
(Been over this kind of linguistic dodge many time with battery vs fuel cell arguments. It's very similar)
Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid.
Unfortunately, you can't take flammable liquids like lighter fluid aboard aircraft, so it isn't going to help much on those long flights unless they change the regs. I don't see that hapening in the current security climate.
Tommy can you ping me?
Can your packets zing me?
Tommy can you ping me?
Oh, tommy, tommy, tommy, tommy....
Here is a mirror of the video if you want to check it out:
pinball_720x540_(divx).avi
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Even googling hasn't helped.
What is slupting?
About a year ago, Popular Science did an article on nanotech motors. They said that the biggest drawback of even the best Li-batteries is that no battery has even hit the 1% efficiency rating. Reasearchers hope that with these mini-engines, we may finally see power devices as small as a battery that can produce over 1% efficiency. I believe that 10% is their ultimate goal, although anything over 1% would still be worlds better than batteries. Granted, use in such devices as portable phones would actually mean that the micro engines would just be recharging the batteries, which would limit the overall efficiency to less than a 10th of a percent, but given other applications and better technology, such nano engines could replace Li-batteries in laptops and other high performance appliances. No more plugging your laptop into the wall, just go to the gas station and filler up ;) .
I came, I saw, She conquered.
somebody post a torrent of the video as a reply; mod whoever's post is a torrent up and mine down
300 times more powerful most obviously be comparing the power density per volume or per mass so why say that and say that its lighter and smaller? arent they the same statements?
I'm fed up with people who don't the meaning of flamebait or troll. If you're going to mod something down, you should at least understand what the hell you're talking about...
It's slashtilted...
(and this story was on the Reg two days ago...)
The nanotech engine looks very far from production ready - two or three unclear images, and an interview, that's it. The video is mainly marketing for Birmingham Uni, AFAICS, and almost entirely void of technical details or facts.
I'll be impressed when I see a prototype actually working, or any kind of technical detail. This looks nothing more than an artist's impression and some smoke designed to drive funding.
There is also a very big hole in the design argument. Engines, OK. But engines do not produce electricity. They have to drive a generator. That is not 100% efficient. So, please, how is a nanoengine going to be more efficient than something like a fuel cell, which converts hydrocarbons into electricity directly?
Not particularly impressed.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
It's just a type-o, although it could almost pass for an obscure word =:-)
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
There could be an optional button for people with water in their ear. When you press it, the phone lights up (literally), and the fire creates a low pressure suction in the ear phone that unplugs the caller (literally).
Why my cousin Jake, he's got him a pinball machine thats at least half that size. And his has sound effects.
BitTorrent seems like a great solution to deal with the Slashdot effect, if the editors ever showed any signs of caring about dealing with it.
I can't see the pinball!
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
The article about the micro engine was frustrating. "300 times more eneergy". Bah! 300 times more energy than a watch battery or a car battery? Obviously, they mean power but how much power? 300 times x? What's x?
Also, since this thing consumes fuel, it might be helpful to compare power-to-weight ratios with the smallest gas engines widely available (e.g., model airplane engines).
Thanks a lot, U Birmingham, for dumbing the article so far down that all it conveys is "oooohhh look, neat new thing".
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
(Google thought is was scultping also).
The microengine are very small (thumbnail) sized combustion engines that drive a generator.
I believe the 300x figure would be for electricity generated in a cubic inch... Though the article seems to actually trying to state that it would be based on cost, that the energy requirement for making the battery far exceeds the amount of electricity that comes out of the battery over it's entire life.
So that these little engines would be very cheap to manufacture. And I need a little assurance that these aren't locally potentially pretty bad (exhaust, explosition, leakage, etc....)
These people are in a better position to seriously answer your question though. Well, at least about the "diamond" part. I doubt that both technologies (nanofabrication and artificial diamond sheet growth) need to progress in lock step.
diamond conference
I believe Russians have been precipating diamond substrates for years, and that the technicians are gaining momentum. I'm sure it's at least founding technology for the type of construction-grade extrusion discussed in the book.
Idle speculation on the nanofabrication side though:
I think it will happen in our lifetimes, yes. And I fear that the devices will someday be massively available to people with bad intentions. It's a lot of power. And the downsides weigh too heavily to consider any more on a sunny Friday. Can you imagine modified software 'bots in the extrusion software?
This is one technology that I'm not going to be impatient for.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
Once again, the story has been posted on physicsweb two days ago.
"These micro-engines have over 300 times more energy than an ordinary battery and are much lighter and smaller."
So a cellphone that needs a daily charging will now need a refill once a year?
I would wager that this claim carries a degree of exaggeration.
The 300x almost certainly refers to energy density (per unit mass or per unit volume; pick one). This is consistent with switching from batteries to chemical fuels (though still a bit optimistic). The thing is, a fuel cell will do the same thing with _zero_ moving parts, instead of the one-moving-part micro-turbine, or this very complicated engine.
Look forwards to refilling your cell phone about once a month when fuel cells are integrated in production models (prototypes have existed for a while now). Both fuel cells and micro-turbines have problems with heat generation, though.
"Lasers were once seen as the technology that would transform the world."
And they were right - they did. Not then, and not in the laser death ray way they thought back then, but now. I read a compelling article a while back (probably here) that proposed that the tech boom of the 90's was not the result of computer, the Internet or anything else. It was about lasers becomming cheap enough to be put in everything. Lasers are in millions of things. We don't even think about them - CD, DVD, fibre networks, SP/DIF..etc.
The transformations don't happen until the price point comes down. Nanotech is more like the way people think about the Internet - it starts inexspensivley from the get go (wouldn't have without those cheap lasers though). Once the first practical molecular assemblers are created (assuming they can be) it will boom very very quickly.
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
I managed to snag a copy of the video; it's at http://lasthome.net/pinball_720x540_(divx).avi
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
Moron.
yeahoooo
Um, where is the spring-loaded plunger that hits the ball?
lolololol. ROFLMAO! Wow I am throwing down some funny and original quips!
HOLY
FUCKING
SHIT.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
There's nothing better than the rush of a multiball or an extra ball, or a freegame. And the two guys mentioned in the leed-in to the article are geniuses. I love Monopoly. There is a new "the Simpson's" pinball game out that is mind boglingling fun. The quotes in it are sweet-assed. besides that there is only one game that's better, Twilight Zone, because it had "the Power Ball" in it. Oh and the Episode 1 Starwars game because you get to knock the fuck out of Jar Jar with the steelie in order to advance to fight Darth Maul in a multiball death match
I went to battle MC Escher but drew a blank
first of all '3d rendering' (quake, etc) has virtually nothing to do with reality. all it is doing is figuring out which polygons to hide and which to show.
'3d printing', stereolithography, that might have some application.
but as for 'compression'. you dont understand anything about plants do you?
a corn seed is about the size of a tic. and when you pop it in the ground you get a 6 foot tall plant with several footlong edible thingies on it, that have replicated the original seed a couple hudnred times....
talk about 'data compression'. you can send that little tiny packet of DNA through the US mail and blam, out comes a 10 foot tall plant with 1000 new replicas of itself.
dear sir
you seem to be laboring under the delusion that publishing articles on slashdot is supposed to create 'interest' or 'insight' or 'wisdom'.
i am sorry. the purpose is to drive advertising clicks.
thus, when people like you write lenghty letters that others , irate as yourself, click on, read, and reply to, that only generates more banner ad hits and more advertising.
contrarily, those who find the article 'neato' will blither endlessly as well, generating even more ad hits.
the author of this story has played it perfectly. a well written interesting story would not have been as controversial, and thus would not have gotten as many hits, nor as many irate folks such as yourself replying to it.
so in the final analysis, i have to say, dont you get it? the media does not exist to be good. it exists to sell advertising. especially places like slashdot. and controversy sells advertising.
The nanotech engine looks very far from production ready - two or three unclear images, and an interview, that's it. The video is mainly marketing for Birmingham Uni, AFAICS, and almost entirely void of technical details or facts.
.5 mm from the chamber wall, irrespective of the size of the chamber. The few miniature engines that have actually operated under their own power are nudging this limit and, not surprisingly, have very incomplete combustion resulting in very low efficiency and extremely polluting emissions.
Hear, Hear. Miniature engines are sexy projects for demonstrating micro-machining capabilities but they invariably disappear from the radar after the initial media flurry. The inventors are so excited about their projects that they overlook the inevitable effects of downscaling on IC engines. The most important effect is that of flame quenching at the relatively cool walls of the combustion chamber. This occurs at around
At least the folks at Berkeley did their homework. They list the following research issues:
Quenching Effect
Engine Sealing
Friction/Lubrication
Fuel Carburetion
Thermal Management
Engine Diagnostics
Ignition
Ancillary Equipment/Packaging for an Autonomous System
The first two effectively rule out anything with combustion chambers smaller than 1 mm. I'd be amazed if someone can make a working micro-engine, sadly it's just a pipe dream.
...so how long before we get micro sterling engines to power our notebooks off of the heat from their own processors? hmmm...
I know that standard batteries generally have a small amount of outgassing, but what sort of combustion byproducts are we talking about with this lighter-fluid-based "battery"?
The article is very light on the technical details of how lighter fluid will generate the energy, other than that the device be "a few millimetres wide". But the MSDS for Ronsonol Lighter Fluid goes into quite a bit of detail:
* 95% Light Aliphatic Naptha
* 5% Medium Aliphatic Naptha
* <30ppm Benzene
* Hazardous Decomp Products: Carbon Monixides & unidentified organic compounds may be formed during combustion.
And here's the biggie:
* EXTINGUISH PILOT LIGHT/CIGARETTES & TURN OFF OTHER SOURCES OF IGNITION PRIOR TO USE
Does that mean no more drivers lighting up while talking on their cell phone while driving 45mph in the fast lane? Or can I just look forward to their eventual combustion?
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
What a spectacular use of time and money! I can think of no better way to showcase the capabilities of MEMS than with a fucking game. This is sure to elimate all the worlds problems. These scientists should get a nobel prize for making great use of their time in the lab. I'm sure their wives and children are proud of them. I once read an article on a MEMS device that could help make fiber optics accessible to almost anyone for cheap. Who in the hell needs useless stuff like that? Give us a nanotech foosball table, and science can stop right there, as far as I'm concerned.
The "nanoguitar" (more properly "microguitar") isn't "news" at all. Dustin Carr, a former Cornell physics graduate student, built this thing in 1997!
Here is a mirror of the movie in case it gets slashdotted. http://brain.cx/pinball.avi
D00dz ...
MEMS != nanotech.
Bulk silicon etching processes and artifacts (as amazingly useful and marvelous as they may be) are still very different from (though probably one of the steps toward) one-atom-at-a-time.
The thing is, a fuel cell will do the same thing with _zero_ moving parts...
Or on the order of 10^23 moving parts, depending on how you look at it.
-- MarkusQ