Slashdot Mirror


First Hot-Ice Computer Created

KentuckyFC writes "Sodium acetate is the stuff inside chemical handwarmers that emits heat when it crystalizes after you press that little metal widget. That's why it is known as hot ice. Now a computer scientist in the UK has created a computer made entirely out of hot ice. The device processes information by exploiting the movement and interaction of wavefronts of crystallisation as they move through the material. The data input is in the form of metal wires that trigger crystal nucleation. The output works by reading off the direction of the moving wavefronts and the edges of the resulting crystals. The researcher has created AND and OR gates and solved a few problems such as finding the shortest path through mazes. There are even a few videos of the computer in action. The resulting computer is far from perfect, however. The data readout sometimes gives no solution and at other times gives circular results, the hot ice equivalent of a BSOD."

6 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. So the computer is... by Shikaku · · Score: 4, Funny

    Vaporware?

    Full of hot air?

    Heating things up?

    Hot stuff?

    (I'm just throwing all the obvious puns, I'm done.

    1. Re:So the computer is... by interkin3tic · · Score: 5, Funny

      You took all the puns? Man, that's just ice cold.

  2. Pretty cool, but... by AmigaHeretic · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...does it run Linux?

    1. Re:Pretty cool, but... by jebrew · · Score: 5, Funny

      Only if you're using IceWM

  3. quite brave of them by v1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    to host 25 and 50mb movies on an "ac.uk" server that's about to get turned into paste...

    --
    I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
  4. Re:New information processing methods by CarpetShark · · Score: 4, Funny

    And your qualificatione for shaking your head are what?

    Uhh... having a head, and being able to shake it?