Making Non-Electric Circuits With Computer Logic

Check out Spintronics here:

See my video about the marble computer here:

[Ryush]

“Every model is wrong, but some are useful” is one of my all time favorite sayings. I model various systems for work whether that’s logistics, commodity movements/prices, or industrial chemical processes (ChE by degree). Every single model is wrong in some way (ESPECIALLY if using some sort of machine learning) but they all get the job done just fine.

[jamesclerkmaxwell]

Mind blowing fact : While he was fiddling with Maxwell's equations, J. H. Poynting showed that in an electric circuit, the energy is conveyed ***outside*** the wire. The wire only acts as a "road" guiding the energy form the battery to the load. The EM activity (E & B fields) is maximal outside the wire. The only energy appearing inside the wire is waste heat. This irrefutable fact collides head-on with most of our analogies about electricity (edit : for practical purposes, the chain analogy used by Action Lab is indeed possibly the best analogy available (far better than electron being "small marbles of matter" endowed with kinetic energy), and the Spintronic toys are great and fantastic way to "grasp" electricity- I wholeheartedly recommend them. We must just remember that reality is even more mysterious- as the energy seems to travel in what we call a "vacuum")

[rasmus]

I'll take a wild guess, but in 2 months some madman is playing Doom on this thing.

[prajwaljarali]

Waiting to see @Electroboom experimenting with Spintronics and getting shocked by it.

[vaakdemandante]

I have this set & the extensions and I confirm it's super fun to build and operate those circuits!

Oh, and it's actually humbling to realize how easy it is to just "burn" a circuit by designing one that when switched on just destroys itself because you forgot to add resistance on every path and it short circuits dumping all energy at once :)

[glenncurry]

It's come full circle! I'm so old I was taught multivibrators using transistors as switches before CPUs existed. Bi- and monostable versions. The base level circuits logic gates are based on. I learned as they were put together on chips. 555, ... I literally designed those gates to a component level and board design. But once it got to hundreds and then thousands of them on a CPU chip, I decided to just sell the stuff instead! 🙂

But to see mechanical devices in place of those simple transistor circuits is going full circle back for me.

And glad you gave an h/t to Veritasium's video that started a long, long, long... 🙂

[pitviper]

Working in the medical engineering field for many years, there were many devices that stand out.
The Monaghan 225 ventilator was a fluidics only ventilator.
Absolutely no electronics.
The internal modules were the sensors and various logic devices, all powered by air and O2.
It would not be affected by EMF.

[JustWastedHoursHere]

I remember being fascinated about Charles Babbage who made a mechanical computer back in the 1800s. A full scale one was actually built and it works!

[rickwheeler]

What a fantastic visual. As an electronics instructor this would be a great tool. Thanks for sharing

[jamesfanaticgames]

The real surprising thing about this video is the amount of times i had to pause to understand what was going in ;D

[pantonbleu]

Circuits have always been a mystery to me. It's great how simply you explained it here. 👍👍👍👍

[ax_rief]

i think the title should be "Making Computer Logic With Non-Electric Circuits"

[zizoukurosaki]

Man… felt like you read ma mind when you mentioned Veritasium haha.
But its great that you highlighted that, its always amazing to see fellows respect and value each other opinion, and helps us little nerds keep the wires connected properly in our brains 😂

[LucidPoseidon]

I think I might have to buy this set at some point. Clockwork stuff makes me go feral. To see such a magnificent series of cogs and gears running wild to achieve a singular purpose is just blissful.

[ransomxvi]

We need even more videos about this. I first saw this product on Steve Mould, but I always wanted expansion on the topic. I like your use of the blue links in the chain. Truth tables are also a neat feature to show. I love how using real physical analogies can explain very low level computing. We often forget that the word Computer = a device that can compute logic through gates exactly like this.

[EvilTim]

Wise words at the end. That video by Veritasium really made me rethink electricity but it's so useful to have a good intuitive analog

[kokoqweq]

Thanks for introduction of basic mechanic component with Spintronic ! I got one packs and just lack with early stage, haha
(I'm newbee of mechanic system but I'm excited that I can clear the stage with spintronics XD )

[freetolook]

Back in the sixties, I was given a toy computer that you assembled called Digicomp.
It was plastic gears and metal poles to hold it together. The idea was based on the first large main frame computers and you would input switches, turn the gears and an answer would crank out.

[anaphylastiks]

This is really cool. What a great way to teach people how to understand electronics.
So cool to actually visualise it like that.
I will definitely be buying one of their products.

[jaapvanklaveren]

Thanks for your video. 40 years ago I built logic circuits with air at Festo Pneumatic. Now almost all of that has been replaced by the PLC. It is still used in potentially explosive atmospheres.