Indeed... I'm still trying to figure out how McCain has already won the republican nomination. He doesn't have enough committed delegates. I'm pretty sure that his TRUE COMMITTED delegate count is somewhere in the neighborhood of 900. You people realize that there's uncommitted delegates in this thing of ours, don't you?
Nice post (generally a breath of fresh air when we see one of our own).
Something I'm a bit surprised that no one has mentioned yet is the capacitance of the p-n junctions in the transistor. Don't forget changing the dielectric constant and the potential has an effect on this aspect of the component as well. To people asking "how important is such a capacitance?" Well, the capacitance causes frequency dependent behavior (you have just introduced an RC time constant).
An area where I have dealt with this personaly was with a Si quadrant photodetector (basically involved pointing a laser at 2 photodiodes and letting the beam spot oscillate between the two at increasing speeds. An output signal essentially shows which detector has more optical power incident on its photodiode, equally shared power yields zero signal). When the beam switches too quickly, the detector can't tell that the beam is actually moving (the detector mistakes it for a smear of light across both photodetectors). Just one real world (hah... to some) example that I happened to have in my arsenal.
Bringing my point back to transistors... you can clearly see how this would be important if it has an effect on the rate at which information can be exchanged and processed!
Thermal/dark/reverse leakage current will always remain a concern. In the physics world, we're generally only concerned when it comes to a single diode detector that we're using to take measurements with and at that point the liquid nitrogen cooling is the simple and obvious solution. Furthermore we have that luxury because we only have one diode... It isn't practical to have a reservoir of liquid nitrogen in our home computers that needs to be filled regularly to cool (or else damage) the hundreds of transistors contained within. Doping is an interesting thought. I just wonder, as you said, what effect it will have on the current gain of the transistors if this many impurities are introduced and how well it can still be used for its basic function.
Well basically by definition the fiber walls ARE opaque. The whole point of fiber optics is that the light is not able to escape the inside of the fiber so long as the conditions for total ineternal reflection are maintained.
I just have to say that a great deal of care is taken to ensure the safety of people around radioactive materials. The uninformed would imagine that nuclear waste disposal consists soley of dumping everything into a huge bin and burying it somewhere out of sight. The reality is a lot more comforting.
To ensure that waste is disposed of properly, careful doccumentation is made about each form of waste contained in a bin and the bin is designed specifically to safely contain that TYPE of waste. For example, neutron activated materials are contained in an isotope of gadalinium that has a high neutron capture cross-section. When neutrons are captured, this isotope transistions to another stable (non-radioactive) isotope. The end result is that the waste has decayed to become non-radioactive and has NOT created more radioactive material in the process.
A lot of people don't have a background in nuclear physics... and those people should not be looked to as judges of the safety of disposal systems. The simple fact of the matter is that most people feel like a cop in a raid. They know they're wearing a bullet-proof vest, but they'd rather not get shot in the first place. Personally I don't blame them, but they have to learn to trust the vest.
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Indeed... I'm still trying to figure out how McCain has already won the republican nomination. He doesn't have enough committed delegates. I'm pretty sure that his TRUE COMMITTED delegate count is somewhere in the neighborhood of 900. You people realize that there's uncommitted delegates in this thing of ours, don't you?
Sorry, using a series of nanotubes to build internets only results in smaller internets.
Something I'm a bit surprised that no one has mentioned yet is the capacitance of the p-n junctions in the transistor. Don't forget changing the dielectric constant and the potential has an effect on this aspect of the component as well. To people asking "how important is such a capacitance?" Well, the capacitance causes frequency dependent behavior (you have just introduced an RC time constant).
An area where I have dealt with this personaly was with a Si quadrant photodetector (basically involved pointing a laser at 2 photodiodes and letting the beam spot oscillate between the two at increasing speeds. An output signal essentially shows which detector has more optical power incident on its photodiode, equally shared power yields zero signal). When the beam switches too quickly, the detector can't tell that the beam is actually moving (the detector mistakes it for a smear of light across both photodetectors). Just one real world (hah... to some) example that I happened to have in my arsenal.
Bringing my point back to transistors... you can clearly see how this would be important if it has an effect on the rate at which information can be exchanged and processed!
Thermal/dark/reverse leakage current will always remain a concern. In the physics world, we're generally only concerned when it comes to a single diode detector that we're using to take measurements with and at that point the liquid nitrogen cooling is the simple and obvious solution. Furthermore we have that luxury because we only have one diode... It isn't practical to have a reservoir of liquid nitrogen in our home computers that needs to be filled regularly to cool (or else damage) the hundreds of transistors contained within. Doping is an interesting thought. I just wonder, as you said, what effect it will have on the current gain of the transistors if this many impurities are introduced and how well it can still be used for its basic function.
Yes, of course they are cased, you don't want other light getting in and you don't want to damage the fiber in normal daily usage.
Well basically by definition the fiber walls ARE opaque. The whole point of fiber optics is that the light is not able to escape the inside of the fiber so long as the conditions for total ineternal reflection are maintained.
I just have to say that a great deal of care is taken to ensure the safety of people around radioactive materials. The uninformed would imagine that nuclear waste disposal consists soley of dumping everything into a huge bin and burying it somewhere out of sight. The reality is a lot more comforting. To ensure that waste is disposed of properly, careful doccumentation is made about each form of waste contained in a bin and the bin is designed specifically to safely contain that TYPE of waste. For example, neutron activated materials are contained in an isotope of gadalinium that has a high neutron capture cross-section. When neutrons are captured, this isotope transistions to another stable (non-radioactive) isotope. The end result is that the waste has decayed to become non-radioactive and has NOT created more radioactive material in the process. A lot of people don't have a background in nuclear physics... and those people should not be looked to as judges of the safety of disposal systems. The simple fact of the matter is that most people feel like a cop in a raid. They know they're wearing a bullet-proof vest, but they'd rather not get shot in the first place. Personally I don't blame them, but they have to learn to trust the vest.