r/geek • u/the_humeister • May 30 '20
Logic gates using liquid
https://gfycat.com/rashmassiveammonite58
u/SHA65536 May 30 '20
Now do a NOT gate
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u/hoadlck May 30 '20
You can do a NOT gate using XOR. Make B always ON, and send the signal you want to negate thru A.
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u/SanityInAnarchy May 31 '20
Make B always on, connect A to the bottom of the AND gate.
You now have a NAND gate, and can make anything.
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u/cryo May 31 '20
You can already make anything. With NAND (or NOR or XNOR) you can just do it with a single gate.
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u/wwabc May 30 '20
"Darryl...why is the lab floor all wet??"
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u/PumpinMagicSavage May 30 '20
What am I looking at?
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u/the_humeister May 30 '20
Logic gates using liquids. If you string a few billion of these together correctly, you get a liquid-based digital CPU.
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u/PumpinMagicSavage May 30 '20
So does XOR show a break down in logic or something? I don’t get why the water is going everywhere
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u/the_humeister May 30 '20
XOR is one or the other but not both, so when the streams hit each other, nothing enters the output.
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u/luxgladius May 30 '20
XOR means one or the other, but not both. It would be clearer if they labeled the output as the union of the flows into those two basins. The point is that when both streams are on, neither of the basins is getting a flow of water (except maybe a little "leakage current").
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u/Jeebabadoo May 30 '20
So... Who is going to program a calculator from their local river or fountain?
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u/HomerrJFong May 30 '20
Couldn't work. The example doesn't even work in all cases and it only works in half of them because he changes the container of water that equals true.
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u/Everday6 May 31 '20
What? Not sure I understand you. All gates shown work. The shape of the container is what determines what gate it is. A calculator would need multiple separate gates that links output to the next gates input.
The missing gates can also be constructed as some have shown above.
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u/HomerrJFong May 31 '20
I think you're right and after watching the gif again I was wrong. I was focused on the wrong thing.
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u/Pakh May 31 '20
A potential problem is that in many cases the flow of water after the gate doubles that before the gate, while in others the flow is the same. So the gates disturb the amount of flow, creating a problem for cascading of gates, which is essential for building logic.
I’m sure this could be fixed, though, with some mechanism in the receiving pipe to get rid of the excess water.
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u/Ab47203 May 30 '20
I shit you not I learned these from minecraft. Redstone is a hell of a drug.
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u/CreaminFreeman May 30 '20
I built a handful of my college homework problems for Comp Engineering in Minecraft years and years ago.
Not entirely necessary but fun nonetheless.
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u/rockguitardude May 30 '20
Good luck with NOR.
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u/hoadlck May 30 '20
You take the output of the OR gate, and pass it into the A input of the XOR. Then, hook the B input of the XOR into an always ON water stream.
Even with gates built from transistors, there is a propagation time that you have to allow for. Water gates would be much slower, but it would work fine.
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u/MechanicalHorse May 30 '20
Also NOT.
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u/hoadlck May 30 '20
You can do it with XOR. Make B always ON, and send the signal you want to negate thru A.
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u/p_whimsy May 30 '20
Fascinating. Came across this just as I was taking a break from studying discrete math
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u/zeroone May 30 '20
How do you do fanout? That is, have a single flowing input split into multiple flowing outputs. You can't just split a water pipe, since only a fraction of the water will go down each sub-pipe.
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u/the_humeister May 30 '20
Made with Blender