MadModder
The Breakroom => The Water Cooler => Topic started by: dsquire on October 27, 2014, 03:51:28 AM
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Hi guys
Here is an interesting use of an old material
Cheers :beer:
Don
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Wow. Now that's interesting. So many uses too.
Good find.
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Now. That is interesting...... :thumbup:
Those sort of things remind me, of the 1970's promises. How the silicone chip was going to transform our lives.
Two day working week. A pleasure time society, with everything done for us........ Hmmm...... :scratch:
Thanks for showing, Don!
David D
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Those sort of things remind me, of the 1970's promises. How the silicone chip was going to transform our lives.
Two day working week. A pleasure time society, with everything done for us........ Hmmm...... :scratch:
You can't argue that the silicon chip (not silicone!) hasn't changed our lives totally. But not quite in the ways that people thought, that's for sure...
If you have access to the BBC iPlayer, do a search for Horizon - there is (was, I assume it's still there) an episode from the 1970s regarding the rise of the computer/silicon chip; and, following it, a 30 minute debate with some "experts" about how the computer would revolutionise society. Two things in particular struck me about the debate - first, how they all got their predictions completely wrong.... and second, just how polite the debate was from the various sides. Much more civilised than the shouting matches that seem to be considered to be "debate" these days.
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Much more civilised than the shouting matches that seem to be considered to be "debate" these days.
You're wrong, and you're a grotesquely ugly freak.
I think it depends on the debate though. There's always been plenty of rabid debates throughout history. There was a particularly rough one in the 1910s.
I remember hearing that the team that won the nobel prize for graphine made their first batches by placing sticky tape on graphite blocks. At the time people were using it as an example of cutting edge science being accessible, but I think there was more to it than just sticky tape and graphite...
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Like Nanotech, another good(?) idea desperately seeking an aplication, so I might be able to have a superthin foldable smartphone etc...............so what, its just a gimmick and you can bet it will be mega expensive. Carbon is a good conductor, (there are better) it has ben used in electric motors as carbon brushes since the early part of the last century. The problem with the latest microchips is that the gaps between the copper conductors has got smaller and smaller and the tracks themselves thinner, to serve an obsession with minuturisation, which, taken beyond a certain level of "smallness" is pointless. Now the chips get too hot because of the current being carried in these excessively small conductor rails, carbon may help, it may not. more research needed. cheaper touchscreens, well ok, thats got potential for bigcorp to make bigger profits, but touch screen tech is just another gimmick anyway. Batteries for electric cars, now there is a possiblity, but at the end of the day, it is just superthin carbon, and the properties of carbon have been known for years. The electric car is also of questionable value. unless it is recharged by wind or wave power you are just moving the pollution somewhere else. I am desperately looking for something clever here. As to the comments on what the silicon chip has done for society, it has brought us many small usefull devices that are in huge demand, cheap to make, expensive to buy, and impossible to repair, The perfect product for profit. I was reading a comment on another forum about the fact that 40 years ago scrapyards were full of cars that had rusted out and blown their engines, someone commented that a modern scrapyard looks like a supermarket car park, it is full of clean smart vehicles on which the computerised electronics has faults which put them beyond economical repair. That is not progress.
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I have been watching the graphine producers stocks for a couple years now and they have changed very little which is quite suprising when you think about the advantages it offers for future products I have great hopes for this discovery but when?
From what I read at the time a group of guy's got together fridays for a " what the f..k day " of experimenting and pressed the tape on some graphite and there ya go Noble frikin Prize Wow. Back in the day we just called it carbon tracking usualy at the distributor cap who knew!
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Don't forget that graphene isn't the same as graphite. Graphene wasn't produced until 2003. It's a carbon sheet an atom thick and has all kinds of funky properties as a result.
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There is a good article on graphene in this week's New Scientist. (25 October 2014: No 2992;) entitled 'FALLING FLAT. Has the graphene boom turned to bust ?'
Dave.
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The problem with the latest microchips is that the gaps between the copper conductors has got smaller and smaller and the tracks themselves thinner, to serve an obsession with minuturisation, which, taken beyond a certain level of "smallness" is pointless. Now the chips get too hot because of the current being carried in these excessively small conductor rails, carbon may help, it may not.
There's a couple of problems with "silicon" chips.
1) They are now so small, and internally running at such low voltages/currents, that quantum effects are becoming noticeable. e.g. a transistor is supposed to switch on, but becuase there's so few electrons available, it might not.... try debugging THAT one.
2) Also, because there is so much happening on an individual chip, the actual amount of current is, indeed, cooking them. To run cooler, they must run at lower voltages and currents - i.e. less moving electrons - see 1 above.
There are other, generally more exotic, materials which can partially offset this problem - but ultimately we will have to switch to photons to make the next generation of even smaller even more powerful computers...
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Nice post AdeV, just done an experiment I did in a physics lesson in about 1963, get a pencil and scribble a heavy line on a piece of paper, put the leads of a multimeter on either end of the line and move them together watch the needle go up as they get closer. bend the paper, its flexible and it conduct electricity! can I have my Nobel prize now please?
Phil
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And there is the problem no bell prize for you :D
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LIKE! (Can't find the button)
Phil
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He He, :) Hermetic reminded me of an open day at the senior tech where I was a student conducting folk around the physics lab. We had a neon sign glowing on a table with no wires to the coil providing the current at high Volt minimal Amp. Someone asked how it worked and I, (who should have known better) used a pencil to point to the line drawn on the table top. :Doh: Rudely Jolted into the realization that that was not the thing to do. Ouch
John B
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Yes, but it is the sort of thing that you do in a split second isn't it, I well remember spraying WD40 on an arcing ignition coil on a Leyland sherpa engine. As the wall of flame engulfed the engine and my eyebrows, the thought going through my head after the expletives was " you really should have thought about that a bit more before you did it"
Phil