Not only Edison, but I got an electrical engineering degree and Tesla was not mentioned once. Neither was Edison for that matter. Same in all the physics classes that I took.
I built a crystal radio when I was a kid. It's a normal radio, but runs the antenna through a diode to rectify the energy to power the radio and speaker. This is the exact same concept unless some new laws of physics have been found. Instead of powering the speaker (earphone), charge a battery instead.
humans got to today's level of technology starting with sticks and rocks for tools. The big jump however came with the lathe. Using a lathe, you can either build any tool known to man or the tool used to build any known tool known to man (a wafer processing machine for example). You can even construct a first lathe using nothing more than some hand tools and a drill.
One of the major drivers of the high cost of the rovers (and other spacecraft) is the high launch cost. You need high reliability if you're going to spend a lot of money to get there. High reliability costs a lot. This in turn creates a positive feedback loop - $.5B to launch, $.1B to build, $.3 billion to test. Now that you're up to a billion $ investment, it makes reliability more imperative, so you have $.5B to build and $1.2B to test. As long as you are spending $3B, for only 50% more you can have more capability and even higher reliability. Repeat until you absolutely run out of money then fly.
You can also look at it from a limits perspective. If launch costs were free, an individual would have the ability to put a rover on Mars. If they go up to $500/kg then you'd have universities with their own rovers. If you spend $50k for launch costs, what is the economic justification for spending money on testing? Doesn't work? Send another.
I recently read an interesting book on this subject written in the early 1900's about this exact matter: The Decline of the West by German historian and mathematician Oswald Spengler. According to him, there have been about 7 recorded civilizations prior to Western Civilization; that history is not a linear progression to some higher goal, but rather a cyclical phenomena with each going through well defined stages and an overall period of ~1000 years.
At the least, it's a new perspective about how history progresses and attempts to describe the development of the arts and mathematics based on the sole defining purpose of the culture that brings it about. The later stages are when cultures develop into civilizations at which point the defining purpose has run its course and dies. I guess at the most, it's an eerily accurate prediction and description of the world today (written 100 years ago). According to him, the defining purpose western civ is based on Norse culture's search for the infinite which it can never reach. Calculus is an example as are shared cultural myths (Arthurian legend and search for the Holy Grail).
Another interesting question is that if you had a culture where multiplying numbers was irrelevant, where is he impetus to invent the mathematics to do so.
I remember this exact loop being stuck in my brain for a few days. I'd studied the shuttle intensely for about a decade prior to the accident and knew everything that was possible (or a high school student) to know about it. All of my free time was spent creating a detailed shuttle simulation using a computer (still rare at the time).
I just found out last week that I also went to school a few miles from Coco Beach (20 miles from Canaveral). I was only 4-5 years and knew I went to kindergarten in Florida, but never bothered to look up exactly where (Melbourne) on a map before. I later grew up to be an engineer and worked on various parts of the space program.
It happened in the morning for me. The principal came on the PA and said the space shuttle had exploded You could tell he was very shake by the incident, but said that parachutes had been spotted, so there was hope for survivors. I knew this was not possible, or at least something they did.
I had physics class after lunch. The whole class was in shock and no one said anything.. The teacher had locked himself in his office at the back of the class and was chain smoking (he'd applied for the teacher in space thing). There was a large inflatable space shuttle that hung in the front of the classroom. One of the students pulled the cork and deflated it so it hung there like Dalí's clock.
The rest of the class convinced him to re-inflate it before the teacher came out seeing how despondent he was but only managed to halfway blow it up. As far as I know it stayed that was for years afterwards.. After class, I went to the band room where we ha a media center and a very high quality tv and watched news reports. I noted how different it was when Columbia was destroyed. I fond out about it from a newspaper at Starbucks on the way to the beach. It did not have anywhere near the same impact as Challenger. That evening I met up with some coworkers (former NASA employees) for happy hour where we sat around speculating what happened. I was also a little worried as I had worked on the shuttle (in particular, a part that becomes active around where it disintegrated) and in the back of your mind, you start thinking, is there any possible way that I could be responsible?
The sad fact is, robotics isn't a hobby for poor people.
I did pretty well, learned much, got a degree in control systems and subsequent job in robotics and never had any money growing up and certainly nothing like the abundance of nearly free hardware that is available today. In my experience, the work is 95%+ software, understanding real-time control and how to make it work. That's ~$8 of arduino and friends parts on ebay. No matter what you do, output is 99% of the time going to be pwm or discrete I/O (both built into wiring) and input is going to be discrete or an analog value. That covers every piece of hardware out there from light meters, strain gauges, motors, lights, microwave ovens, sprinklers, etc. Knowing how to talk to external devices is embedded programming, but the bulk of the work in any robotics system.
Unless you start talking about vision systems, I don't know of anything that costs over $10. Seriously. Do yu have any examples?
What's wrong with QBasic Gorillas? I spent much of HS developing orbital simulations that I used in my space simulator (decades before kerbals in space) using qbasic. That simulation opened a lot of high end job opportunities.
That's a lot of hubris there. Cultures and civilizations have about a 1,000year life cycle. Western civ is in it's 800th year. Who living in Rome or Greece at its height, could have thought that in another 400 years all of its glories would fall into ruin. No more aqueducts, Colosseum, pantheon. Don't think it won't happen again. Read Asimov's Foundation.
Get a raspberry pi. It comes with mathematica and should last all the way through graduate school (but works down to kindergarten). Seriously, had mathematica been available when I was going through university, it would have saved me tousands of hours of tedious work. I had a physics prof who reproduced one of his grad student's theses work from a decade earlier in a day something that it took the student two years to do by hand.
On the upside, some of them are mildly amusing. In a pathetic sort of way. I have a theory that the people making some of these are trying to out absurd one another or as a personal inside joke...
Slashdot Mirror
Not only Edison, but I got an electrical engineering degree and Tesla was not mentioned once. Neither was Edison for that matter. Same in all the physics classes that I took.
I built a crystal radio when I was a kid. It's a normal radio, but runs the antenna through a diode to rectify the energy to power the radio and speaker. This is the exact same concept unless some new laws of physics have been found. Instead of powering the speaker (earphone), charge a battery instead.
I have a wireless tea kettle that seems pretty efficient. It's also very high power. There is no physical electrical contact anywhere in the system.
tools-to-make-the-tools
humans got to today's level of technology starting with sticks and rocks for tools. The big jump however came with the lathe. Using a lathe, you can either build any tool known to man or the tool used to build any known tool known to man (a wafer processing machine for example). You can even construct a first lathe using nothing more than some hand tools and a drill.
You can also look at it from a limits perspective. If launch costs were free, an individual would have the ability to put a rover on Mars. If they go up to $500/kg then you'd have universities with their own rovers. If you spend $50k for launch costs, what is the economic justification for spending money on testing? Doesn't work? Send another.
They tried that in Arizona, but was declared unconstitutional (to no fanfare unlike the other AZ law).
I vote for the Venezuela model.
Perhaps for people who some here to get away from politics. If I wanted politics, I'd find and go read a political website.
Environmentalism is a religion Are you going to stop the environmentalists?
At the least, it's a new perspective about how history progresses and attempts to describe the development of the arts and mathematics based on the sole defining purpose of the culture that brings it about. The later stages are when cultures develop into civilizations at which point the defining purpose has run its course and dies. I guess at the most, it's an eerily accurate prediction and description of the world today (written 100 years ago). According to him, the defining purpose western civ is based on Norse culture's search for the infinite which it can never reach. Calculus is an example as are shared cultural myths (Arthurian legend and search for the Holy Grail).
Another interesting question is that if you had a culture where multiplying numbers was irrelevant, where is he impetus to invent the mathematics to do so.
It's like they keep repeating it over and over again.
"Uh-oh. That's not supposed to happen. . . ."
I remember this exact loop being stuck in my brain for a few days. I'd studied the shuttle intensely for about a decade prior to the accident and knew everything that was possible (or a high school student) to know about it. All of my free time was spent creating a detailed shuttle simulation using a computer (still rare at the time).
I just found out last week that I also went to school a few miles from Coco Beach (20 miles from Canaveral). I was only 4-5 years and knew I went to kindergarten in Florida, but never bothered to look up exactly where (Melbourne) on a map before. I later grew up to be an engineer and worked on various parts of the space program.
Isn't the mean on all freshman level physics classes around 30%? It was at my university.
There is always someone saying no to launch.
security regs and brought in an AM radio
I remember those days where having a wire that could be construed as an antenna was an on the spot, no questions asked dismiss-able offense.
I had physics class after lunch. The whole class was in shock and no one said anything.. The teacher had locked himself in his office at the back of the class and was chain smoking (he'd applied for the teacher in space thing). There was a large inflatable space shuttle that hung in the front of the classroom. One of the students pulled the cork and deflated it so it hung there like Dalí's clock.
The rest of the class convinced him to re-inflate it before the teacher came out seeing how despondent he was but only managed to halfway blow it up. As far as I know it stayed that was for years afterwards.. After class, I went to the band room where we ha a media center and a very high quality tv and watched news reports. I noted how different it was when Columbia was destroyed. I fond out about it from a newspaper at Starbucks on the way to the beach. It did not have anywhere near the same impact as Challenger. That evening I met up with some coworkers (former NASA employees) for happy hour where we sat around speculating what happened. I was also a little worried as I had worked on the shuttle (in particular, a part that becomes active around where it disintegrated) and in the back of your mind, you start thinking, is there any possible way that I could be responsible?
The sad fact is, robotics isn't a hobby for poor people.
I did pretty well, learned much, got a degree in control systems and subsequent job in robotics and never had any money growing up and certainly nothing like the abundance of nearly free hardware that is available today. In my experience, the work is 95%+ software, understanding real-time control and how to make it work. That's ~$8 of arduino and friends parts on ebay. No matter what you do, output is 99% of the time going to be pwm or discrete I/O (both built into wiring) and input is going to be discrete or an analog value. That covers every piece of hardware out there from light meters, strain gauges, motors, lights, microwave ovens, sprinklers, etc. Knowing how to talk to external devices is embedded programming, but the bulk of the work in any robotics system.
Unless you start talking about vision systems, I don't know of anything that costs over $10. Seriously. Do yu have any examples?
What's wrong with QBasic Gorillas? I spent much of HS developing orbital simulations that I used in my space simulator (decades before kerbals in space) using qbasic. That simulation opened a lot of high end job opportunities.
future of the human race
That's a lot of hubris there. Cultures and civilizations have about a 1,000year life cycle. Western civ is in it's 800th year. Who living in Rome or Greece at its height, could have thought that in another 400 years all of its glories would fall into ruin. No more aqueducts, Colosseum, pantheon. Don't think it won't happen again. Read Asimov's Foundation.
Get a raspberry pi. It comes with mathematica and should last all the way through graduate school (but works down to kindergarten). Seriously, had mathematica been available when I was going through university, it would have saved me tousands of hours of tedious work. I had a physics prof who reproduced one of his grad student's theses work from a decade earlier in a day something that it took the student two years to do by hand.
On the upside, some of them are mildly amusing. In a pathetic sort of way. I have a theory that the people making some of these are trying to out absurd one another or as a personal inside joke...
I have a bunch of those...well, three. Trivial to make yourself.
Insurance, by design, is statistics. They are the ones who invented the field. AKA gambling.