I wanted to make the circuit equivalent of Braess's Paradox but I'm not sure it's possible with these components. Might need to make some mods! The sponsor is Private Internet Access: Get 82% off and 3 extra months free piavpn.com/stevemould
I like how this captures the "everything is a resistor" "everything is a capacitor" "everything is an inductor" aspect of electrronics. Like yeah the 'resistor' has a load of 'resistance', but all the rotating parts do. They also all have some mass and intertia, so they all have some 'inductance', etc
That little blue link in the chains makes such a difference in comprehension of the whole model. That was an extremely smart design choice. Little visual design choices like this are what make me happy or drive me nuts with stuff I see every day.
same. but i automatically think when i encounter unmarked moving items, to dab some tippex or paint on them. or even use my cheap (sub £20 ) tachometer with one of it's reflective stickers. but the convenience built-in, can't be argued with.
@@theBestInvertebrate: "Correcting"? Where? And who are _you_ to me? And even if your claim were somehow correct, though it's not, then: 1. why wouldn't making sense be necessary, and 2. since when should the venue type matter?
Another cool analogy is: You can take everything that was done here and replace the chains with oil lines, and have all the same logic applied hydraulically, or even pneumatically with pressure instead of voltage. The interesting dynamic of how it applies force to a motor for example: electrically you can spin a motor magnetically, where as hydraulic/ pneumatical systems can spin a motor kinetically. Electricity has volts/ current/ resistance, where as fluids have pressure/ flow/ volume, volume has length/ width/ height, a Kinetic system has mass/ velocity/ inertia, a magnetic systems has attraction/ repel/ conduction, a thermal system has temperature/ pressure/ conduction, a mechanical system has torque/ velocity/ friction, friction has pressure/ temperature/ velocity, states of matter have solid/ liquid/ gas, time has past/ present/ future, space has length/ width/ height, velocity has distance/ time/ vector (direction)... on and on; It's easy to see how many of these qualities overlap and how many systems shake hands with each other-- and that's without even stepping into chemical and nuclear interactions. The shear complexity of what is possible within the laws of physics with only a finite amount of elements, is literally brain melting when you try to think about it deeply.;
I just gave it to my 8year old son as a christmas present. And we both found it very cool to play with, and I as a electrical Engineer found it very intuitve and thought to my self that it must be possible to build a computer with enough ressources with all of that. Well. Now youtube recommend me your video and you just have done the basics for that. Great Job, great video!
im pretty sure mechanical computers exist and did develop for a time but they went out of fashion since electronics were cheaper to produce and more efficient
I have an 8yo too and he loves Snap Circuits. I was debating whether this would be good for him with the struggles he was talking about in clarifying series and parallel. Snap Circuits follow circuit diagrams very closely. Do you feel like they are making sense to your child?
One thing i absolutely love about this is its appearance. It's not some basic colors and simple flat shapes with sans serif text; the colors are metallic and blend well together, the pieces all have etched patterns in them, and the text matches. This is such an elegant, almost Victorian like toy
@@downsonjerome7905 you know teachers dont have to pay for the props and teaching materials out of pocket right? The school would cover that if it was a teaching aid.
I've long thought of Inductors as "spinning up" like a flywheel, just to keep straight how they work in my head. It's really neat to see them make that analogy into reality.
I want to say two things; 1) Great video! I would love to play around with one of those kits. 2) I saw what you did @ ~15:00 with the sight gag about full bridge rectifiers, and I fully appreciated it. I just didn't want you to think your efforts went unnoticed.
I remember an electricity exercise in school where we compared a car shock absorber behavior with an RLC circuit and showed how with the right frequency of currents or bumps on the road, both could enter in resonance. It made me realize how every systems, mechanics, electric or chemicals are interconnected and basically about energy transfer. I still failed that class but had a nice mind blown moment :D
yes, basically its all about Physics, theres not such thing in nature as Chemistry thats an artificial construct by man. Like there's no such thing that 2 dimensional object everything has at least 3 dimensions, 2D is for exemplifications only.
@@ShiningForce07physics is also a construct by man, and maths is at the core of that. you can't reduce a discipline without adequate knowledge of it beforehand
A shock absorber is a frequency damper, its electrical equavelant is a capacitor...it smooths out the back emf oscillation in switching currents as to reduce arcing at switch contacts.
oh my god what a golden idea. the creativity that went onto building the components as gear mechanisms and getting them to work together is nothing short of amazing.
Another cool analogy is: You can take everything that was done here and replace the chains with oil lines, and have all the same logic applied hydraulically, or even pneumatically with pressure instead of voltage. The interesting dynamic of how it applies force to a motor for example: electrically you can spin a motor magnetically, where as hydraulic/ pneumatical systems can spin a motor kinetically. Electricity has volts/ current/ resistance, where as fluids have pressure/ flow/ volume, volume has length/ width/ height, a Kinetic system has mass/ velocity/ inertia, a magnetic systems has attraction/ repel/ conduction, a thermal system has temperature/ pressure/ conduction, a mechanical system has torque/ velocity/ friction, friction has pressure/ temperature/ velocity, states of matter have solid/ liquid/ gas, time has past/ present/ future, space has length/ width/ height, velocity has distance/ time/ vector (direction)... on and on; It's easy to see how many of these qualities overlap and how many systems shake hands with each other-- and that's without even stepping into chemical and nuclear interactions. The shear complexity of what is possible within the laws of physics with only a finite amount of elements, is literally brain melting when you try to think about it deeply. .. ;
@@alveolate There wouldn't be any IP protection when it comes to the basic components themselves. Spintronics itself is derivative work of concepts that exist in the public domain, you can't patent a sprocket or chain, nor one-way mechanisms such as clutch bearings and ratchets, etc. The only IP protection would be the book that goes along with the set under copyright, and how the set itself is modeled as you can't make a 1:1 reproduction. What use Lego would get out of these kinds of components are not covered by IP protection. Plus there's the blatantly obvious issue that these kinds of gearsets would have an insane amount of frictional losses if they didn't have bearings. Technic will never have bearings for quite obvious reasons. While it might be a decent idea, it just would not work in practice. Plus there's too many issues with how Spintronics approaches certain concepts, which results in bad analogies, something Lego would probably avoid when it comes to educational building systems.
i was so confused as to weather i should take mechanical branch for my ug course thanks for making it clear . this is pure beauty. i have adhd and this is the only video i could watch over and over without getting bored and still learn something new. thankyou so much
I had an A-Level physics teacher who told me that if you were to have a 100% accurate model of something, then you would just have the thing itself. All diagrams, models, descriptions, analogies, abstractions etc. are going to have some level of imperfection about them because they are not the thing they are trying to explain, but in many cases that's exactly why they are helpful tools in allowing our meaty skull-contents to gain some understanding :)
Sometimes the thing itself is not even a 100% accurate model of all such things, due to natural variance. So, say you had a complete model of the human body, which would just be a human body, that could only be a single human body, which is not a complete model for every human body. So how could you ever get a complete model of every human body when each one is slightly different? Here, a model which is actually abstracted from the thing itself (the human body) could be more accurate in representing the totality of human bodies. This is making me think of the Platonic Realm of Forms.
@@Bayonet1809 Only the thing itself is a model of the thing itself, not other things, even very similar ones. Becuase, yes, your body and my body are quite different.
I am incredibly late to this, but I wanted to mention how impressive I find these. I feel as if these could significantly lower the age at which children could learn about circuits, and perhaps just as importantly they can make learning about them fun.
At university, learning control theory, we analyzed electrical circuits and mechanical systems using transfer functions and a popular exercise was to make an analogous mechanical configuration to a given circuit and vice versa. This is exactly this. The resistors are friction elements, capacitors springs, inductors masses, voltage a force and current speed. I really loved these similarities, as they give you an additional insight on how everything works.
It's the same thing because they share the same models/equations. Still in some areas (like thermal), they miss some components. Dynamic systems are everywhere in nature but some models (like transfer functions) are impossible
Paul Boswell, the creator, is an AMAZING guy who also did a mechanical computer, “Turing Tumble”-I could not recommend his work more highly. Thanks for giving him some well-deserved publicity.
👍 Absolutely brilliant! But I think they should reconsider using stamped anodized aluminum pieces (gears) instead of plastic and design a better drive than the chain they have now.
😂😂😂 "the Veritasium shaped elephant in the room" and later the unibrow (ElectroBoom) joke when talking about the FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER. 😂 It was epic! The end segment was remined me of Alan Turing's mechanical computer (which broke the Enigma and helped to win WW2).
Actually, it wasn't Turing's, but he indeed upgraded it and pushed to its limits. What is funny, is that something like 100 years earlier Charles Babbage invented a mechanical computer, but never got it done.
Just loved when you said that "we know that Quantum Mechanics is wrong" because that's exactly the opposite of what basically every physicist would say, they almost invariably say "we know that General Relativity is wrong... because it's not quantized". I also sit on the side of the fence where it seems that QM is wronger than GR, even if this one might need quantization at the limit of (maybe) Plank scale volume-time (which is so extremely tiny that it's almost indistinct from seamless anyhow).
The full bridge rectifier was pretty impressive to see work, not to say the flip flop! I’d love to see some logic circuit being built on that, not just a gate. I’m in sheer disbelief of how great looking this project looks! Great video!
Actually that thing scared me 😅 He suddenly appears with unibrow but ignores it, like in some creepy videos where all seem to be usual but you know that something off.
Bruh they regulated pressures through a combination of relief valves which are automatic, sometimes steam whistles which are manual and by putting less fuel in the firebox when u want pressure to go down and more when you want it to go up but they did not use these.
the production quality of this is NUTS. its not only an absolute marvel of engineering, ite BEAUTIFUL. the steampunk vibes are so strong on this, along with the beautiful accents on the components
I'm an electrical engineer and at uni we studied mechanical circuits as analogies of electronic circuits, since that was what we were more familiar with. E.g. a mass-spring circuit could be modeled as a LC circuit. A force would translate to a voltage supply, and so on. We also modeled some hydraulic stuff with electrical circuits equivalents, e.g. a water tank could be considered a capacitor.
I was confused about water tank being considered a capacitor, but I guess if you're filling it from the bottom then the analogy holds. idk why that took me so long to realize
I was lucky enough to do a GCSE course called "systems and control", which was half pneumatics and half electronics, and it was really interesting to see how you could do the same things in both, and even mix them together. In the same way as you can make a crude timer with a capacitor and a resistor, you can do the same thing with a reservoir and a valve, for example.
Im a biomedical engineer and we had a course where we learned to model mechanical fluid and biomechanical systems as circuits and differential equations
I LOVE that you mentioned the Veritasium video because the biggest problem with analogies is that they're fundamentally incorrect in many ways. However, simplified models have proven useful many times over for solving problems intuitively while ignoring lots of extraneous details (frictionless surfaces, anyone?). Appreciate you touching on both sides of the equation. :)
Yeah, analogies help us feel more familiar with the actual works under the hood, while at the same time, getting some work done. They're not actual explanations of how reality actually works, but may be close enough to get our work done. Actually, I doubt we'll ever be able to really understand reality. It's too far beyond our capacity. All we'll ever have is closer, and closer, and closer, analogies... But the real truth will be hidden from us forever
@@zzzxhrg A meta-analogy seems in order. Maps are getting closer and closer to the territory, but the map can never be identical to the territory. Moire patterns in graphene lattice are analogous to sub-atomic phenomenon as well. This is mysterious. It seems it can help us to model some interactions, and maybe learn new things about sub-atomic particles, but we don't know if they're a perfect analogy or not.
I mean… did you think that anybody likely to be watching this video would be unaware that analogies are imperfect reflections of their subject? The only perfect reflection of a thing is the thing itself.
@@zzzxhrg Yes, words themselves are explained by other words which are explained by other words. We're always trying to explain what we mean, or what something means, because absolute truth is difficult when words cannot do what is required. I get a chuckle out of listening to Jordan Peterson stringing together sentences of $10 words, trying to explain his ideas in the most appropriate language.
Analogies are meant to convey information so the average can get some mental picture of what's going on. I use the "water in a garden hose" analogy to explain to people the properties of amperage and voltage. Most people don't know the difference. When I explain amperage is the number (amount) of flowing electrons and the voltage is the pressure behind those electrons, it clicks with them. Of course it's flawed but it conveys a message and gives a mental picture nature of electricity.
Bro. Two things. You are an incredible relator of information. Video feels more like an everyday conversation than something as educational as it truly is. Also, you look like you REALLY love 420.
I have literally never understood LC circuits until 8:42, and it suddenly completely clicked. Thank you so much for this Steve, this is one of your best videos so far!
This model is so much more intuitive than anything my college professors have ever taught so many details that took so long to understand all packed into a set.
I've never heard of spintronics but my area of concentration in mechanical engineering is Mechatronics. What you show here is only scratching the surface of system dynamics, which is a study in engineering that mathematically represents electrical, mechanical (translational and rotational), fluid and thermal systems with the same math. There are mathematical equivalences between all of these domains. Just as there are between magnetic fields, gravitational fields and electrostatic fields. I made these connections early on in my physics studies and was excited to see it all tied together in the system dynamics approach, which is the foundation of Mechatronics.
The "transistor" piece is voltage controlled, so it's actually more similar to an FET rather than a "basic" BJT transistor, which is current controlled.
When I was in 3rd year of university studying software engineering I took a course as an elective with a very misleading title of "Systems and Simulations" I went into it thinking we would be learning how to design and program simulations on a computer. It turned out to be a course geared for electrical and mechanical engineers. We learned about this exact thing using electrical systems to simulate mechanical systems and vice versa and it blew my mind despite never actually being able to apply this in my field and it really helped me really understand the power of the math I was forced to learn in first and second year in a less abstract way that those courses weren't able to do.
Next, take a writing class, so I don't run out of breath reading your work....don't take this comment wrong, I'm not being mean.....The fact I have to apply a disclaimer shows just how misunderstood the internet has become or can become when people are reading other people's writings as they tend to take them the wrong way therefore giving the reader a bad taste in their mouth and this ultimately creates a hostile environment to where two people now become enemies and this will usually bring in other posters who either feel the need to defend the OPs comment against the commenter or stand with the opposing side and this will create a back and forth between two or more strangers who by the time they are done reading will find themselves completely out of breath and nothing accomplished but that's not this I just found myself out if breath reading your comment and seeing that you went to university figured you might look at a writing class as you probably write a lot in your field of choice at least I think you would......Breathe....anyways just having a little fun at the expense of others.
This is beautiful. One of the things I have trouble explaining to people without a lot of immersion in physics but who need this for their work exams is exactly high pass and low pass filters. They cannot "visualize" it. I am really thinking of getting this for that purpose
Yeah, I had to do an experiment in Uni where we built a high-pass filter and I really didn't get how tf it worked, but this here is much more grounded (no pun intended) and easier to understand.
The rectifier part is too good. So subtle, well played LOL I’m a mechanical engineer that designs ECU’s so this is a great crossing of world’s. Fantastic video, I too appreciate a good analogy.
I love how different physical concepts describe each other. Really makes you think about what determines the rules of our universe and their similarities across materials.
Lots of things in physics, electronics, economics, biology, science in general, can be described with linear dynamical systems. Even more things can be described by non linear dynamical systems. Understanding these systems makes you extremely powerful.
Very cool kit, seems like a great learning tool. I especially liked the representation of an inductor as a flywheel, had never thought of it like that before and it makes a lot of sense.
Steampunk entusiasts could easily take this idea and make a basic, real, steampunk computer. Maybe they'd need to scale it down somehow to make it practical but still. It'd be amazing.
@@dog-ez2nu Or perhaps, as its steampunk, a steam engine. Could be the "battery" or sorts. Perhaps in this miniturised version a small steam turbine would suffice. Could also be a cool plot device that if steam pressure drops or the turbine is damaged in some way you end up with limited power, both spin volts and spin amps would be reduced. Which could result in reduced performance, slower computation, but also perhaps increased number of errors for circuits that require a certain range of timing to work.
I forgot how fun this stuff was. It's been years since my elec tech classes, but I still get a little thrill seeing some of the stuff I learned there. It's honestly surprising how much joy I got the first time I got an led to turn on with a bread board.
Another cool analogy is: You can take everything that was done here and replace the chains with oil lines, and have all the same logic applied hydraulically, or even pneumatically with pressure instead of voltage. The interesting dynamic of how it applies force to a motor for example: electrically you can spin a motor magnetically, where as hydraulic/ pneumatical systems can spin a motor kinetically. Electricity has volts/ current/ resistance, where as fluids have pressure/ flow/ volume, volume has length/ width/ height, a Kinetic system has mass/ velocity/ inertia, a magnetic systems has attraction/ repel/ conduction, a thermal system has temperature/ pressure/ conduction, a mechanical system has torque/ velocity/ friction, friction has pressure/ temperature/ velocity, states of matter have solid/ liquid/ gas, time has past/ present/ future, space has length/ width/ height, velocity has distance/ time/ vector (direction)... on and on; It's easy to see how many of these qualities overlap and how many systems shake hands with each other-- and that's without even stepping into chemical and nuclear interactions. The shear complexity of what is possible within the laws of physics with only a finite amount of elements, is literally brain melting when you try to think about it deeply....
This is such a crazy eccentric idea, and I like the steampunk style of it too. I think it's also a useful bridge between electronics analogy and mechanical design. Wonderful, insightful video!
I'm a graduated EE and I still had trouble wrapping my head around how inductors work in a circuit, but not anymore after this video! I wish these kind of demonstrations were available in university circuit analysis 1 classes. It would make understanding the components and Kirchoff's laws so much easier.
100% agree. I’m a graduated BME (still plenty of electronics classes), and it had never been explained to me until today that DC is just very low frequency AC. Would have been so nice to have spintronics in those classes.
I'm just so impressed with this kit! Not gonna buy one (probably), but it seem just amazing to me. The ingenuity, the amount of cleaverness and engineering needed to come up and make all these components, the attention to detail. Just wow! Every time you showed another component I was like "No way! That's incredible!".
The great thing is there's a browser based simulation on their website. It has a problem with floating point accuracy when dealing with circuits that spin really slowly, which can cause perpetual motion, but otherwise it's fun to play around with once you understand the concept
I literally get my electrical engineering degree in two days yet this is probably the best analogy for how electrical components operate I have seen so far
This is so incredibly fascinating, and I'd love to play around with this type of stuff. Even just by this video, I feel I got a way better idea of how circuits work! The engineering behind this is so cool!
I would love to see a series (pun intended) about each of the commonly used logic gates represented with spintronics. Makes me feel like a Turing complete wall clock might actually be possible.
Epic nod to Electroboom. :) Edit : A circuit suggestion: basic h-bridge motor controller. (As seen in under 5v circuits via transistors) Seems ironic to simulate a circuit designed to control rotations via an emulation of electronics done *VIA* rotations.
Back in the late sixties, My Dad was working for Honeywell as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace division. He was working on a EMP proof re-entry guidance system for ICBMs. The concept was to use fluid dynamics as a form of current to mimic electronic circuits. I don't know if it was successful, but he brought home some very weird little components. Among them were fluid amplifiers which were made of some kind of clear plastic that had a figure visible that looked like a stick figure of a man. The head was where the flow would come in. The "legs" were where the flow would exit, depending on how the "arms" were affected.
There are devices like that in the automotive industry as well. Automatic gear shifting in some older cars was purely done by "computing" different oil pressure values (inputs) in a maze like valve island to decide which gears should run or be hold in place (outputs). Modern transmissions added computer controlled electric solonoid vaves on top to be more precise.
@@oO0Xenos0Oo There are still many cars on the road today with hydraulic logic in the gearbox. Check the "Precision transmission" youtube channel for very nice breakdowns.
Those components were used in a field of endeavor called fluidics. Using fluidic components interconnected with small plastic hoses, the mechanical engineers pointed out they could do the same functions as could be done with electrical circuits. The fluidic "circuits" were fascinating to watch in action. The mechanical engineers also pointed out that fluidic circuits were immune to the effects of EMP (electromagnetic pulse, as from a nuclear bomb) and EMI (electromagnetic interference), and fluidic circuits could achieve electrical isolation. The mechanical engineers were fond of building "me too" fluidic logic circuits to mimic various electrical logic circuits and demonstrating their fluidic creations at shows. The electrical engineers scoffed at fluidics because the electrical engineers recognized that electrical circuits would win out over fluidics due to orders of magnitude more speed, orders of magnitude smaller size, orders of magnitude lower cost, and the fact that there were electrical solutions for dealing with EMP and EMI, and isolation could be achieved in electrical circuits by magnetic, electromagnetic, and optical coupling. We know now that electrical circuits achieved overwhelming dominance, but there probably remain some niche applications for fluidics today.
I am so stoked that I pledged all-in for this campaign. As someone who has always been fascinated by electronics but never had the discipline to learn more, this will be perfect for me. And my girls will have a fantastic tool to start their understanding of the wonders of electronics.
First thing that came to my mind with inductor was dampers or a flywheel on a car. Also loved the little easteregg with full bridge rectifier. With your demo I understood how it works way better.
I probably would've pursued electrical engineering if I played with something like this as a kid. This and a voltmeter. I used to disassemble and reassemble my toys as a kid, but I could never understand how the electronics worked inside them. Knowing which was what and why the things were used the way they did would have been really nice growing up. The farthest I ever understood electronics back then was that there was positive and ground.
When I was a kid we had these 300-in-1 or 500-in-1 electronics boards where you could make hundreds of different electronic devices and experiments with all the supplied components that stuck into a big breadboard but they were very clever and designed for kids to be able to easily make electronic circuits. Of course back then RadioShack had a section in the back of the store with shelves of every electronic component that you'd want and anything else you'd need so I started making my own things, mainly trying to make my own synthesizers, a solid state guitar amplifier and distortion pedals but even with such an interest in electronics I moved on. We just don't normally take an interest we have as a kid and carry it into a career in adulthood.
i think many kids did that. thing is theres more to it than i would have thought back then... mechanical stuff is much more understandable at a low level imo
I’d love to see a video going more in depth on the RL circuit formulas and explaining how the formulas apply intuitively when you’re looking at spintronics. Great work Steve! Keep it up!
As an electronic engineer who spend several years learning how to model any physical system as an electric circuit, seen the oposite approach has been really enjoyable
I've been into analog electronics & mechanics my whole life, so this is like an amazing combination of the two worlds, I'm genuinely blown away, mostly because it's so simple, yet not something most of us think of creating, though that's probably because it's use is educational + entertaintement and only some of us think about often. It is however much more interesting than I thought at first glance, it's got every component needed to explain any basic (and not so basic!) circuit to someone. Now they should make a Vacuum Tube / FET, so working based on (negative) voltage.
I've been imagining something like this for over a decade and always wondered if I could make money by inventing it. Someone beat me to the punch but regardless, this is so sick I couldn't stop smiling throughout the entire video. It's like a dream. Pure glee!
Another cool analogy is: You can take everything that was done here and replace the chains with oil lines, and have all the same logic applied hydraulically, or even pneumatically with pressure instead of voltage. The interesting dynamic of how it applies force to a motor for example: electrically you can spin a motor magnetically, where as hydraulic/ pneumatical systems can spin a motor kinetically. Electricity has volts/ current/ resistance, where as fluids have pressure/ flow/ volume, volume has length/ width/ height, a Kinetic system has mass/ velocity/ inertia, a magnetic systems has attraction/ repel/ conduction, a thermal system has temperature/ pressure/ conduction, a mechanical system has torque/ velocity/ friction, friction has pressure/ temperature/ velocity, states of matter have solid/ liquid/ gas, time has past/ present/ future, space has length/ width/ height, velocity has distance/ time/ vector (direction)... on and on; It's easy to see how many of these qualities overlap and how many systems shake hands with each other-- and that's without even stepping into chemical and nuclear interactions. The shear complexity of what is possible within the laws of physics with only a finite amount of elements, is literally brain melting when you try to think about it deeply.''
@@caiocc12 Also talent is not something innate. It's hard work and determination to keep doing and perfecting and adapting and perseverance until reaching the goal. That's what genius and talent is to me. It's determination and perseverance and hard work. I see determination, perseverance and hard work in these spintronic. That's why i'd say product is genius and people who made it were talented. Very same applies to this YT channel!
Steve, thank you. I love you for taking a massive break in the middle of an engaging video to clarify accuracies and inaccuracies of things even marginally related, it’s what makes this such a great channel and why I sometimes use your videos to explain concepts to my curious and eager 8 year old.
Honestly, as an electronic engineer, this spintronic seems more complicated than the real thing, but still I can't express how much I love this idea. There is so much care and thought in every single component it's unreal. Not only the wonderfully clever mechanics for every different component, but even the design is beautiful. It gives that old school Cyberpunk look. In a Cyberpunk world where steam power is everything and electricity is not used, I bet every circuit would work and look exactly like these spintronics.
This is what I imagine Gnomes came up with for computing in my D&D campaign and I love these. I didn't know you could buy kits I just knew of old mechanical computers from way back when.
My 7 and 9 year old now know more than most adults about electricity thanks to their spintronics sets. We’ve had a blast building the circuits and solving the puzzles.
I'm an electrical engineer and it's always been fun to try to make 'electronics' out of mechanical components. One time I made a mechanical version of Nine Men's Morris, got boring eventually but a very fun project.
Electrical engineer or electronics engineer? Electrical deals with a completely different aspect of electricity.. and they dont intertwine like an electrical engineer more than likely could not do the electronic engineers job but the electronic engineer would have a better understanding of an electrical engineers job...
@@Z-Ack At my school there is only "electrical" engineering, however if you actually look at the courses its a mix of electronics as well electrical. Final year is all electives so you get to specialize further during that year
Whoa, ever since Veritasium came out with his Snatoms which are a much better analogy for molecules than the old ball and stick models I've wondered if there could be something along those lines to better model electrical circuits. This is super impressive
Another cool analogy is: You can take everything that was done here and replace the chains with oil lines, and have all the same logic applied hydraulically, or even pneumatically with pressure instead of voltage. The interesting dynamic of how it applies force to a motor for example: electrically you can spin a motor magnetically, where as hydraulic/ pneumatical systems can spin a motor kinetically. Electricity has volts/ current/ resistance, where as fluids have pressure/ flow/ volume, volume has length/ width/ height, a Kinetic system has mass/ velocity/ inertia, a magnetic systems has attraction/ repel/ conduction, a thermal system has temperature/ pressure/ conduction, a mechanical system has torque/ velocity/ friction, friction has pressure/ temperature/ velocity, states of matter have solid/ liquid/ gas, time has past/ present/ future, space has length/ width/ height, velocity has distance/ time/ vector (direction)... on and on; It's easy to see how many of these qualities overlap and how many systems shake hands with each other-- and that's without even stepping into chemical and nuclear interactions. The shear complexity of what is possible within the laws of physics with only a finite amount of elements, is literally brain melting when you try to think about it deeply. . ...
Apart from anything else, these kits are just so elegant to look at. The old-timey clock appearance of those dials leans so hard into the cyberpunk aesthetic, absolutely the right design choice.
I once designed and started building a switching supply based on fluid circuits. Dodes are check valves, Capacitors are tanks with a baffle, a inductor is a coil of pipe, A transformer is two spools of inductors on a rotating shaft. A fet is a pressure controlled switch. Transistors would be tricky though.
This is a great demonstration just like the hose he also states, but being an electrician that has been told by a farmer to wait for the electricity to stop flowing after killing a disconnect... Electricity dissipates far faster than water out of a hose, or even this mechanical demonstration.
Shoutout to all brilliant teachers. Pupils often only appreciate them decades later in life, but that doesn't diminish the appreciation. I'm grateful for the good teachers I had, and even for the not-so-good ones that nevertheless did their best. This video was so much fun watching - even when ignoring the actual content. Just seeing someone obviously brimming with enjoyment of a new toy is uplifting. Thanks Steve.
This thing is just so unbelievably cool. I know very little of electronics but these models are just brilliant. Thanks for your enthusiastic presentation. You've made my day!
I recently started getting into circuits, and I was really confused how a resistor can work on a diode even if it's placed AFTER the diode. But this mechanical toy makes it much more obvious, there is still resistance on the overall circuit even if it's after the diode... thank you Steve Mould (and the creators of this toy)!
4:56 I love those units being a hint as to how all the different components work. A farad is 100 m/N, where N/m would be the units of a spring constant, so spin capacitance is like the inverse of spring strength. N * m, or force times distance, is just energy or work, so spin Watts are J/s or just regular Watts, which is very cool. Most interesting of all, spin Henris are 0.01 N * s² / m. Note that because m/s² is acceleration, multiplying by s² / m is like diving by acceleration. So this can also be expressed as N/a: force divided by acceleration. Newton's famous equation says F = ma, so we see that N/a is just kg; 1 spin Henri is actually 0.01 kg or 10 grams. I think this result is fascinating!
That is fantastic. My mental capacity keeps me from fully grasping the concept of electrical circuitry and its components. Water running through pipes doesnt cut it. Close, but still leaves confusion. I gotta check out more on spintronics and see if I can expand that capacitance. Thanx.👍
Hey Steve, Derek’s partly right but not totally. In DC signals it really is the current in the wire that carries the energy, so the water analogy holds here. But the field carries the energy in AC signals. So if you know anything about Fourier transforms, when you switch the light on there is a transient current which is represented by an infinite number of sinusoidal AC components. The components at highest frequency travel predominately through the field in the dielectric. Those of medium frequency through both the field in the dielectric and the current in the conductor. Those with the lowest frequency predominantly through the current in the conductor.
WOW, it always is amazing you get an eureka moment, and you finally understand intuitively something. Just happened to me with the Full Bridge Rectifier example on the spintronics.
As an EE student, this video helped me to understand more about mechanics and its applications than anything else. The spintronic inductor was eye opening, I've never tought of mechanics as I do with circuits, it was in the maths all allong but I didn't notice! Now I have a better intuition about it and an idea on how to further develop my understanding, thanks!
Just in case you don't say it in the video: The spintronics design is an application of "through and across variables", a generalization of many physical systems into their shared characteristics, Which may itself be a realization of the "geometric product" as the binary operator of physical systems, where most physical phenomena can be understood as lower dimension vectors operating on one another to create higher dimension geometric shapes as "products". For example, there's a video about how Maxwell's equations can be turned into a single geometric product of two high dimension shapes. Sounds unbelievable? I suggest giving that video a watch.
8:43 that's the simplest resonating circuit! It's so cool to see it visualized like this. A full computer is possible, and schematics already exists, we just need more pieces!
Some circuit suggestions: Any DC-DC power converter would be fun to see, Buck, Boost, or Buck-Boost. Maybe an inverter to convert your DC to AC for other circuits. If you can get enough inductors and capacitors you can model a transmission line and see the propagation of the signal, similar to what the Veritasium video talked about. A differential Amplifier which is the basis of an op amp or a simple voltage regulator might be interesting to see as well.
Incredible kit with a fantastic demonstration, I've seen this advertised on social media but was sceptical of the accuracy, seeing the demonstration and description you provided dissolves that scepticism, thank you. Also, thank you for the mono-brow, haven't laughed that hard in quite some time.
This is a great idea. I always found thinking of circuits in this way was the easiest for me to understand, but I've never seen someone actually make a mechanical system to show it. It translates really well to mechanics.
I wanted to make the circuit equivalent of Braess's Paradox but I'm not sure it's possible with these components. Might need to make some mods!
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cool
This nigga really out here looking like Daniel Radcliffe and Steve Buschemi had a butt baby.
I backed their kickstarter, I can't wait to get mine
can you make an Astable transistor multivibrator?
cool video
I like how this captures the "everything is a resistor" "everything is a capacitor" "everything is an inductor" aspect of electrronics.
Like yeah the 'resistor' has a load of 'resistance', but all the rotating parts do. They also all have some mass and intertia, so they all have some 'inductance', etc
Yes, good point. It's very easy to see the stray everything.
You do know that "Steve Mould" is an AI, right? You can see that quite clearly in the characteristic third AI eyebrow at minute 15.
@@wassollderscheiss33 wow! good eyeballs. I can't tell what's causing the unibrow. Any idea?
@@randal_gibbons I don't know. My only goal was to write something Robert Miles might read ;-)
@@randal_gibbons a good unibrow is mandatory for discussing FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIERS
That little blue link in the chains makes such a difference in comprehension of the whole model. That was an extremely smart design choice. Little visual design choices like this are what make me happy or drive me nuts with stuff I see every day.
Totally. So many times I thought "that's really well thought out"
same. but i automatically think when i encounter unmarked moving items, to dab some tippex or paint on them. or even use my cheap (sub £20 ) tachometer with one of it's reflective stickers. but the convenience built-in, can't be argued with.
@@Palmit_: "...With one of IT IS reflective stickers"?
@@HelloKittyFanMan. is that a joke? I thought unnecessarily correcting people's grammar on the internet was dealt with years ago.
@@theBestInvertebrate: "Correcting"? Where? And who are _you_ to me?
And even if your claim were somehow correct, though it's not, then: 1. why wouldn't making sense be necessary, and 2. since when should the venue type matter?
I've never clicked so fast. A physical description of an invisible process. Loved the breakdown!
Another cool analogy is: You can take everything that was done here and replace the chains with oil lines, and have all the same logic applied hydraulically, or even pneumatically with pressure instead of voltage. The interesting dynamic of how it applies force to a motor for example: electrically you can spin a motor magnetically, where as hydraulic/ pneumatical systems can spin a motor kinetically. Electricity has volts/ current/ resistance, where as fluids have pressure/ flow/ volume, volume has length/ width/ height, a Kinetic system has mass/ velocity/ inertia, a magnetic systems has attraction/ repel/ conduction, a thermal system has temperature/ pressure/ conduction, a mechanical system has torque/ velocity/ friction, friction has pressure/ temperature/ velocity, states of matter have solid/ liquid/ gas, time has past/ present/ future, space has length/ width/ height, velocity has distance/ time/ vector (direction)... on and on; It's easy to see how many of these qualities overlap and how many systems shake hands with each other-- and that's without even stepping into chemical and nuclear interactions. The shear complexity of what is possible within the laws of physics with only a finite amount of elements, is literally brain melting when you try to think about it deeply.;
@@OMNI-Infinity What can I say, I enjoy a good video!
where actual electronics is easier to understand, than all this mess =)
I just gave it to my 8year old son as a christmas present. And we both found it very cool to play with, and I as a electrical Engineer found it very intuitve and thought to my self that it must be possible to build a computer with enough ressources with all of that.
Well. Now youtube recommend me your video and you just have done the basics for that.
Great Job, great video!
Just be sure not to use a cheap chain like that, or you might get a system error. A rubber band for wind-up motor shmafety?
im pretty sure mechanical computers exist and did develop for a time but they went out of fashion since electronics were cheaper to produce and more efficient
I have an 8yo too and he loves Snap Circuits. I was debating whether this would be good for him with the struggles he was talking about in clarifying series and parallel. Snap Circuits follow circuit diagrams very closely. Do you feel like they are making sense to your child?
One thing i absolutely love about this is its appearance. It's not some basic colors and simple flat shapes with sans serif text; the colors are metallic and blend well together, the pieces all have etched patterns in them, and the text matches. This is such an elegant, almost Victorian like toy
The aesthetics of this thing are all brilliant. Really smart industrial design was put into the whole package.
thats why it costs $100 for one set haha
@@LKonstantina915 I think it can be target to teachers and schools as a cool demo, so the cost is more affordable to them
@@srpenguinbr teachers get shit pay man and they'd prolly need multiple sets. I don't think many of them would want to drop several hundred on this
@@downsonjerome7905 you know teachers dont have to pay for the props and teaching materials out of pocket right? The school would cover that if it was a teaching aid.
The Electroboom reference when you discussed the full bridge rectifier really got me going. Overall this was a nifty demonstration!
14:58 lmao good one (it should be illegal to comment without timestamp)
Literally laughed out loud; I love the loving punchy vibe in the UA-cam science community.
you mean the FUUUUUUULL BRIDGE RECTIFIEEEEEER!!!!! LOOOOL
Yep that FULL BRIDGE MONOBROW really got me.
I thought it was a video artifact at first! I went back a couple of times to make sure it was really there. ;)
I really appreciate you for making this analogy between electrical and mechanical systems. It really helps me better understand Control systems.
Same. Really cool video ❤
Well, he presented it but it looks like you can get your own set of models to try out too!
I've long thought of Inductors as "spinning up" like a flywheel, just to keep straight how they work in my head. It's really neat to see them make that analogy into reality.
I want to say two things; 1) Great video! I would love to play around with one of those kits.
2) I saw what you did @ ~15:00 with the sight gag about full bridge rectifiers, and I fully appreciated it. I just didn't want you to think your efforts went unnoticed.
Mehdi would be proud 🤣
I was SHOOK when I saw that 😂😂😂
fascinating how our brains immediately notice that something is off...its just one second or so.
Noticed that too. Could've used a bit of reverb but I guess he wanted to keep it subtle.
Ah, I'm so glad you mentioned that! I really didn't know what to think about "the monobrow"...
I remember an electricity exercise in school where we compared a car shock absorber behavior with an RLC circuit and showed how with the right frequency of currents or bumps on the road, both could enter in resonance. It made me realize how every systems, mechanics, electric or chemicals are interconnected and basically about energy transfer. I still failed that class but had a nice mind blown moment :D
Yeah, same differential equations for both systems. The two systems are called Duals.
yes, basically its all about Physics, theres not such thing in nature as Chemistry thats an artificial construct by man. Like there's no such thing that 2 dimensional object everything has at least 3 dimensions, 2D is for exemplifications only.
@@ShiningForce07physics is also a construct by man, and maths is at the core of that. you can't reduce a discipline without adequate knowledge of it beforehand
A shock absorber is a frequency damper, its electrical equavelant is a capacitor...it smooths out the back emf oscillation in switching currents as to reduce arcing at switch contacts.
oh my god what a golden idea. the creativity that went onto building the components as gear mechanisms and getting them to work together is nothing short of amazing.
Another cool analogy is: You can take everything that was done here and replace the chains with oil lines, and have all the same logic applied hydraulically, or even pneumatically with pressure instead of voltage. The interesting dynamic of how it applies force to a motor for example: electrically you can spin a motor magnetically, where as hydraulic/ pneumatical systems can spin a motor kinetically. Electricity has volts/ current/ resistance, where as fluids have pressure/ flow/ volume, volume has length/ width/ height, a Kinetic system has mass/ velocity/ inertia, a magnetic systems has attraction/ repel/ conduction, a thermal system has temperature/ pressure/ conduction, a mechanical system has torque/ velocity/ friction, friction has pressure/ temperature/ velocity, states of matter have solid/ liquid/ gas, time has past/ present/ future, space has length/ width/ height, velocity has distance/ time/ vector (direction)... on and on; It's easy to see how many of these qualities overlap and how many systems shake hands with each other-- and that's without even stepping into chemical and nuclear interactions. The shear complexity of what is possible within the laws of physics with only a finite amount of elements, is literally brain melting when you try to think about it deeply. .. ;
So naive. Electronic circuits were derived from mechanical devices. Do some reading.
lego technic needs to buy this company or at least access to their IP
@@alveolate There wouldn't be any IP protection when it comes to the basic components themselves. Spintronics itself is derivative work of concepts that exist in the public domain, you can't patent a sprocket or chain, nor one-way mechanisms such as clutch bearings and ratchets, etc. The only IP protection would be the book that goes along with the set under copyright, and how the set itself is modeled as you can't make a 1:1 reproduction. What use Lego would get out of these kinds of components are not covered by IP protection.
Plus there's the blatantly obvious issue that these kinds of gearsets would have an insane amount of frictional losses if they didn't have bearings. Technic will never have bearings for quite obvious reasons. While it might be a decent idea, it just would not work in practice. Plus there's too many issues with how Spintronics approaches certain concepts, which results in bad analogies, something Lego would probably avoid when it comes to educational building systems.
i was so confused as to weather i should take mechanical branch for my ug course thanks for making it clear . this is pure beauty. i have adhd and this is the only video i could watch over and over without getting bored and still learn something new. thankyou so much
I had an A-Level physics teacher who told me that if you were to have a 100% accurate model of something, then you would just have the thing itself. All diagrams, models, descriptions, analogies, abstractions etc. are going to have some level of imperfection about them because they are not the thing they are trying to explain, but in many cases that's exactly why they are helpful tools in allowing our meaty skull-contents to gain some understanding :)
A common saying is "The map is not the territory." Every map is useful for something, and not useful for most everything else.
In Statistics, the phrase is: “All models are wrong; some are useful.”
Credit to George Box for that one.
I came to that same conclusion a while ago about the universe. The truth is just the universe itself, and we are fragments of it experiencing.
Sometimes the thing itself is not even a 100% accurate model of all such things, due to natural variance. So, say you had a complete model of the human body, which would just be a human body, that could only be a single human body, which is not a complete model for every human body. So how could you ever get a complete model of every human body when each one is slightly different? Here, a model which is actually abstracted from the thing itself (the human body) could be more accurate in representing the totality of human bodies.
This is making me think of the Platonic Realm of Forms.
@@Bayonet1809 Only the thing itself is a model of the thing itself, not other things, even very similar ones. Becuase, yes, your body and my body are quite different.
Had me laughing like a a madman at "full bridge rectifier". Thanks for the video. Great content, as always!
The newest make-up craze will be the Full Bridge Rectifier, to make everyone look like Bert from Sesame Street, right?
+1 on that from me! 👍 Took half a second of "whats with he's..." Thats a great reference!
ElectroBOOM!
Same! I guess talking about a full bridge rectifier requires a monobrow.
That had me rewinding to check he didn't have that on the whole time
That fact that since high-school you have been explaining science with hydraulic systems is extremely wholesome, I love your videos:)
I am incredibly late to this, but I wanted to mention how impressive I find these. I feel as if these could significantly lower the age at which children could learn about circuits, and perhaps just as importantly they can make learning about them fun.
At university, learning control theory, we analyzed electrical circuits and mechanical systems using transfer functions and a popular exercise was to make an analogous mechanical configuration to a given circuit and vice versa. This is exactly this. The resistors are friction elements, capacitors springs, inductors masses, voltage a force and current speed. I really loved these similarities, as they give you an additional insight on how everything works.
I did have the same subject, good times back then
It's the same thing because they share the same models/equations. Still in some areas (like thermal), they miss some components. Dynamic systems are everywhere in nature but some models (like transfer functions) are impossible
Sounds like you had a good control theory prof, must have been nice! Mine really wasn't so great 😕
Force voltage analogy , force current analogy
Sound like Ogata's "system dynamic " book 😂
Paul Boswell, the creator, is an AMAZING guy who also did a mechanical computer, “Turing Tumble”-I could not recommend his work more highly. Thanks for giving him some well-deserved publicity.
"Turing Tumble" is a copy of "Digi-Comp II" from the 1960s by John Godfrey.
111,1+1th
You can imagine how brilliant this Spintronics thing is, when a third-party youtuber is making a (nonsponsored)video on it!
👍 Absolutely brilliant! But I think they should reconsider using stamped anodized aluminum pieces (gears) instead of plastic and design a better drive than the chain they have now.
Considering he made that simulator free and open source, he deserves it.
😂😂😂 "the Veritasium shaped elephant in the room" and later the unibrow (ElectroBoom) joke when talking about the FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER. 😂 It was epic! The end segment was remined me of Alan Turing's mechanical computer (which broke the Enigma and helped to win WW2).
Yeah, hahahahha!!! this video was soo good!
(this should be a video that teachers can show to their students (or vice versa).)
You spelled it wrong, mate. It should be FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!!!
Actually, it wasn't Turing's, but he indeed upgraded it and pushed to its limits. What is funny, is that something like 100 years earlier Charles Babbage invented a mechanical computer, but never got it done.
ah that's what the unibrow was for! I was very confused
The FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER made me crack up, didn't see that coming
Just loved when you said that "we know that Quantum Mechanics is wrong" because that's exactly the opposite of what basically every physicist would say, they almost invariably say "we know that General Relativity is wrong... because it's not quantized".
I also sit on the side of the fence where it seems that QM is wronger than GR, even if this one might need quantization at the limit of (maybe) Plank scale volume-time (which is so extremely tiny that it's almost indistinct from seamless anyhow).
The full bridge rectifier was pretty impressive to see work, not to say the flip flop! I’d love to see some logic circuit being built on that, not just a gate. I’m in sheer disbelief of how great looking this project looks! Great video!
*F U L L*
*B R I D G E*
*R E C T I F I E R*
The eyebrow was the most impressive part of the rectifier.
Why did he do the mono-brow thing?
Probably can use mechanical devices for some of the logic gates AND, OR, XOR, NOT, NAND, NOR, and XNOR
The monobrow was the cherry on top
14:57 he just had to pull out the unibrow for the full bridge rectifier!
Made me think of ElectroBOOM.
@@ArturdeSousaRocha Thanks. I noticed it and it was sooooo familiar but I had to check the comments for the light to come on. Thanks so much.
I laughed so hard on that
did you see this man in your dreams?
Actually that thing scared me 😅
He suddenly appears with unibrow but ignores it, like in some creepy videos where all seem to be usual but you know that something off.
This is when you realise how clever the Engineers were during the Steam era. This is what they used to regulate pressures etc.
did they tho
Bruh they regulated pressures through a combination of relief valves which are automatic, sometimes steam whistles which are manual and by putting less fuel in the firebox when u want pressure to go down and more when you want it to go up but they did not use these.
@@oliverkrohn8309 bro thought steampunk was real ☠☠
@@snez3538 bro's study on mac dolands
It's not how clever engineers were yesterday, it's how stupid engineers are today.
the production quality of this is NUTS. its not only an absolute marvel of engineering, ite BEAUTIFUL. the steampunk vibes are so strong on this, along with the beautiful accents on the components
Loved the uni-brow during the full bridge rectifier 😂😂
I'm an electrical engineer and at uni we studied mechanical circuits as analogies of electronic circuits, since that was what we were more familiar with. E.g. a mass-spring circuit could be modeled as a LC circuit. A force would translate to a voltage supply, and so on.
We also modeled some hydraulic stuff with electrical circuits equivalents, e.g. a water tank could be considered a capacitor.
I was confused about water tank being considered a capacitor, but I guess if you're filling it from the bottom then the analogy holds. idk why that took me so long to realize
I was lucky enough to do a GCSE course called "systems and control", which was half pneumatics and half electronics, and it was really interesting to see how you could do the same things in both, and even mix them together.
In the same way as you can make a crude timer with a capacitor and a resistor, you can do the same thing with a reservoir and a valve, for example.
Im a biomedical engineer and we had a course where we learned to model mechanical fluid and biomechanical systems as circuits and differential equations
Funny … I had no issues understanding LC circuits but still struggle with mass-spring circuits 😂
Yes. Those spinning things in the video just makes my head hurt, while the electric circuits are perfectly understandable.
I LOVE that you mentioned the Veritasium video because the biggest problem with analogies is that they're fundamentally incorrect in many ways. However, simplified models have proven useful many times over for solving problems intuitively while ignoring lots of extraneous details (frictionless surfaces, anyone?). Appreciate you touching on both sides of the equation. :)
Yeah, analogies help us feel more familiar with the actual works under the hood, while at the same time, getting some work done. They're not actual explanations of how reality actually works, but may be close enough to get our work done.
Actually, I doubt we'll ever be able to really understand reality. It's too far beyond our capacity. All we'll ever have is closer, and closer, and closer, analogies... But the real truth will be hidden from us forever
@@zzzxhrg A meta-analogy seems in order. Maps are getting closer and closer to the territory, but the map can never be identical to the territory.
Moire patterns in graphene lattice are analogous to sub-atomic phenomenon as well. This is mysterious. It seems it can help us to model some interactions, and maybe learn new things about sub-atomic particles, but we don't know if they're a perfect analogy or not.
I mean… did you think that anybody likely to be watching this video would be unaware that analogies are imperfect reflections of their subject? The only perfect reflection of a thing is the thing itself.
@@zzzxhrg Yes, words themselves are explained by other words which are explained by other words. We're always trying to explain what we mean, or what something means, because absolute truth is difficult when words cannot do what is required.
I get a chuckle out of listening to Jordan Peterson stringing together sentences of $10 words, trying to explain his ideas in the most appropriate language.
Analogies are meant to convey information so the average can get some mental picture of what's going on. I use the "water in a garden hose" analogy to explain to people the properties of amperage and voltage. Most people don't know the difference. When I explain amperage is the number (amount) of flowing electrons and the voltage is the pressure behind those electrons, it clicks with them. Of course it's flawed but it conveys a message and gives a mental picture nature of electricity.
Bro. Two things. You are an incredible relator of information. Video feels more like an everyday conversation than something as educational as it truly is.
Also, you look like you REALLY love 420.
I'm amazed at how accurate it is just on principle, even passive inductance just works because the fundamentals are so accurate. It's crazy
Second order linear differential equations are going to do what second order linear differential equations do, no matter the medium.
I have literally never understood LC circuits until 8:42, and it suddenly completely clicked. Thank you so much for this Steve, this is one of your best videos so far!
This model is so much more intuitive than anything my college professors have ever taught so many details that took so long to understand all packed into a set.
I've never heard of spintronics but my area of concentration in mechanical engineering is Mechatronics. What you show here is only scratching the surface of system dynamics, which is a study in engineering that mathematically represents electrical, mechanical (translational and rotational), fluid and thermal systems with the same math. There are mathematical equivalences between all of these domains. Just as there are between magnetic fields, gravitational fields and electrostatic fields. I made these connections early on in my physics studies and was excited to see it all tied together in the system dynamics approach, which is the foundation of Mechatronics.
The "transistor" piece is voltage controlled, so it's actually more similar to an FET rather than a "basic" BJT transistor, which is current controlled.
Was litearlly just thinking that, its a nice set but really it dosnt work for the more advanced compnents in electronics.
What would happen if someone was to pass a 12V current through a fart?
@@FART-REPELLENT a what? Lol
@@ortzinator How many nuclear-warheads would it take to obliterate a fart? 🤪
Spintronics webpage clarifies it behaves like a FET
When I was in 3rd year of university studying software engineering I took a course as an elective with a very misleading title of "Systems and Simulations" I went into it thinking we would be learning how to design and program simulations on a computer. It turned out to be a course geared for electrical and mechanical engineers. We learned about this exact thing using electrical systems to simulate mechanical systems and vice versa and it blew my mind despite never actually being able to apply this in my field and it really helped me really understand the power of the math I was forced to learn in first and second year in a less abstract way that those courses weren't able to do.
We did the same, I took it 3rd or 4th year of my EE degree program IIRC.
Next, take a writing class, so I don't run out of breath reading your work....don't take this comment wrong, I'm not being mean.....The fact I have to apply a disclaimer shows just how misunderstood the internet has become or can become when people are reading other people's writings as they tend to take them the wrong way therefore giving the reader a bad taste in their mouth and this ultimately creates a hostile environment to where two people now become enemies and this will usually bring in other posters who either feel the need to defend the OPs comment against the commenter or stand with the opposing side and this will create a back and forth between two or more strangers who by the time they are done reading will find themselves completely out of breath and nothing accomplished but that's not this I just found myself out if breath reading your comment and seeing that you went to university figured you might look at a writing class as you probably write a lot in your field of choice at least I think you would......Breathe....anyways just having a little fun at the expense of others.
the power of math, fastai
@@jvon3885 if I could like this a dozen times, I would.
@@jvon3885 just take a breath it's not that hard
This is beautiful. One of the things I have trouble explaining to people without a lot of immersion in physics but who need this for their work exams is exactly high pass and low pass filters. They cannot "visualize" it. I am really thinking of getting this for that purpose
Yeah, I had to do an experiment in Uni where we built a high-pass filter and I really didn't get how tf it worked, but this here is much more grounded (no pun intended) and easier to understand.
The rectifier part is too good. So subtle, well played LOL
I’m a mechanical engineer that designs ECU’s so this is a great crossing of world’s. Fantastic video, I too appreciate a good analogy.
The Mehdi mini-cameo almost made me spit coffee on the monitor. That was brilliant!
I love how different physical concepts describe each other. Really makes you think about what determines the rules of our universe and their similarities across materials.
Lots of things in physics, electronics, economics, biology, science in general, can be described with linear dynamical systems. Even more things can be described by non linear dynamical systems. Understanding these systems makes you extremely powerful.
Very cool kit, seems like a great learning tool. I especially liked the representation of an inductor as a flywheel, had never thought of it like that before and it makes a lot of sense.
This helped me finally go from knowledge to understanding of capacitors being used to protect inductors like in electrical motors.
Steampunk entusiasts could easily take this idea and make a basic, real, steampunk computer. Maybe they'd need to scale it down somehow to make it practical but still. It'd be amazing.
just needs a wind up every now and then.
@@dog-ez2nu isn't that where you place a steam engine instead of the manual winder?
Isn't that just a differential analyser
@@Zenovarse I believe the mechanism in that machine was different but insofar as they would both be mechanical computation machines yes, very much.
@@dog-ez2nu Or perhaps, as its steampunk, a steam engine. Could be the "battery" or sorts. Perhaps in this miniturised version a small steam turbine would suffice. Could also be a cool plot device that if steam pressure drops or the turbine is damaged in some way you end up with limited power, both spin volts and spin amps would be reduced. Which could result in reduced performance, slower computation, but also perhaps increased number of errors for circuits that require a certain range of timing to work.
I forgot how fun this stuff was. It's been years since my elec tech classes, but I still get a little thrill seeing some of the stuff I learned there. It's honestly surprising how much joy I got the first time I got an led to turn on with a bread board.
Hope this video led you to try it again
Another cool analogy is: You can take everything that was done here and replace the chains with oil lines, and have all the same logic applied hydraulically, or even pneumatically with pressure instead of voltage. The interesting dynamic of how it applies force to a motor for example: electrically you can spin a motor magnetically, where as hydraulic/ pneumatical systems can spin a motor kinetically. Electricity has volts/ current/ resistance, where as fluids have pressure/ flow/ volume, volume has length/ width/ height, a Kinetic system has mass/ velocity/ inertia, a magnetic systems has attraction/ repel/ conduction, a thermal system has temperature/ pressure/ conduction, a mechanical system has torque/ velocity/ friction, friction has pressure/ temperature/ velocity, states of matter have solid/ liquid/ gas, time has past/ present/ future, space has length/ width/ height, velocity has distance/ time/ vector (direction)... on and on; It's easy to see how many of these qualities overlap and how many systems shake hands with each other-- and that's without even stepping into chemical and nuclear interactions. The shear complexity of what is possible within the laws of physics with only a finite amount of elements, is literally brain melting when you try to think about it deeply....
This is such a crazy eccentric idea, and I like the steampunk style of it too. I think it's also a useful bridge between electronics analogy and mechanical design.
Wonderful, insightful video!
I didn't even think about how this would fit so amazingly into steampunk. Thanks for the insight!
I'm a graduated EE and I still had trouble wrapping my head around how inductors work in a circuit, but not anymore after this video! I wish these kind of demonstrations were available in university circuit analysis 1 classes. It would make understanding the components and Kirchoff's laws so much easier.
100% agree. I’m a graduated BME (still plenty of electronics classes), and it had never been explained to me until today that DC is just very low frequency AC. Would have been so nice to have spintronics in those classes.
A 555 timer might be simple enough to build in spintronics, and would probably be spectacular to look at.
there's 28 transistors and 11 resistors so it'd have to be simulated probably.
@@satibel A 741 op amp would be easier. The resistor count drops to 20! (So still too complex to make cheaply!)
@@stevelknievel4183 any kind of operational amplifier would be great. To see it in action would make those winky foxes more understandable
My vote too!
Just realised I forgot a capacitor.
I love this! And also the cheeky electrboom reference with full bridge rectifiers :)
I'm just so impressed with this kit! Not gonna buy one (probably), but it seem just amazing to me. The ingenuity, the amount of cleaverness and engineering needed to come up and make all these components, the attention to detail. Just wow!
Every time you showed another component I was like "No way! That's incredible!".
The great thing is there's a browser based simulation on their website. It has a problem with floating point accuracy when dealing with circuits that spin really slowly, which can cause perpetual motion, but otherwise it's fun to play around with once you understand the concept
I literally get my electrical engineering degree in two days yet this is probably the best analogy for how electrical components operate I have seen so far
This is so incredibly fascinating, and I'd love to play around with this type of stuff. Even just by this video, I feel I got a way better idea of how circuits work! The engineering behind this is so cool!
I would love to see a series (pun intended) about each of the commonly used logic gates represented with spintronics.
Makes me feel like a Turing complete wall clock might actually be possible.
this technically means a mechanical computer is possible, (although too big to be of use) it still would be amazing to see it
@@he3004 been built before, would be cool to see them in spintronics though
@@he3004 i think the ones who created spintronics also created a mechanical turing machine
The original automatic computer was a mechanical computer.
@@he3004 Charles Babbage built several mechanical computers in 18xx.
Epic nod to Electroboom. :) Edit : A circuit suggestion: basic h-bridge motor controller. (As seen in under 5v circuits via transistors) Seems ironic to simulate a circuit designed to control rotations via an emulation of electronics done *VIA* rotations.
meta spintronics
😂 came to find this, I was so distracted by the brow until he said full bridge rectifier 😭😭
I'm more confused now than I was before.. THX!
Back in the late sixties, My Dad was working for Honeywell as a mechanical engineer in the aerospace division. He was working on a EMP proof re-entry guidance system for ICBMs. The concept was to use fluid dynamics as a form of current to mimic electronic circuits. I don't know if it was successful, but he brought home some very weird little components. Among them were fluid amplifiers which were made of some kind of clear plastic that had a figure visible that looked like a stick figure of a man. The head was where the flow would come in. The "legs" were where the flow would exit, depending on how the "arms" were affected.
That's awesome. I would love to be able to see those components.
There are devices like that in the automotive industry as well. Automatic gear shifting in some older cars was purely done by "computing" different oil pressure values (inputs) in a maze like valve island to decide which gears should run or be hold in place (outputs). Modern transmissions added computer controlled electric solonoid vaves on top to be more precise.
@@oO0Xenos0Oo There are still many cars on the road today with hydraulic logic in the gearbox. Check the "Precision transmission" youtube channel for very nice breakdowns.
Those components were used in a field of endeavor called fluidics. Using fluidic components interconnected with small plastic hoses, the mechanical engineers pointed out they could do the same functions as could be done with electrical circuits. The fluidic "circuits" were fascinating to watch in action. The mechanical engineers also pointed out that fluidic circuits were immune to the effects of EMP (electromagnetic pulse, as from a nuclear bomb) and EMI (electromagnetic interference), and fluidic circuits could achieve electrical isolation. The mechanical engineers were fond of building "me too" fluidic logic circuits to mimic various electrical logic circuits and demonstrating their fluidic creations at shows.
The electrical engineers scoffed at fluidics because the electrical engineers recognized that electrical circuits would win out over fluidics due to orders of magnitude more speed, orders of magnitude smaller size, orders of magnitude lower cost, and the fact that there were electrical solutions for dealing with EMP and EMI, and isolation could be achieved in electrical circuits by magnetic, electromagnetic, and optical coupling.
We know now that electrical circuits achieved overwhelming dominance, but there probably remain some niche applications for fluidics today.
I am so stoked that I pledged all-in for this campaign. As someone who has always been fascinated by electronics but never had the discipline to learn more, this will be perfect for me. And my girls will have a fantastic tool to start their understanding of the wonders of electronics.
This video was far beyond my ability to understand, gonna need to rewatch
First thing that came to my mind with inductor was dampers or a flywheel on a car. Also loved the little easteregg with full bridge rectifier. With your demo I understood how it works way better.
The subtle ElectroBOOM reference killed me. Incredible video as always!
I probably would've pursued electrical engineering if I played with something like this as a kid. This and a voltmeter. I used to disassemble and reassemble my toys as a kid, but I could never understand how the electronics worked inside them. Knowing which was what and why the things were used the way they did would have been really nice growing up. The farthest I ever understood electronics back then was that there was positive and ground.
When I was a kid we had these 300-in-1 or 500-in-1 electronics boards where you could make hundreds of different electronic devices and experiments with all the supplied components that stuck into a big breadboard but they were very clever and designed for kids to be able to easily make electronic circuits. Of course back then RadioShack had a section in the back of the store with shelves of every electronic component that you'd want and anything else you'd need so I started making my own things, mainly trying to make my own synthesizers, a solid state guitar amplifier and distortion pedals but even with such an interest in electronics I moved on. We just don't normally take an interest we have as a kid and carry it into a career in adulthood.
Same. I used to disassemble and hopefully reassemble all my toys. I wanted to know how they "tick"
i think many kids did that. thing is theres more to it than i would have thought back then... mechanical stuff is much more understandable at a low level imo
Well this spintronic confuse me even more about how i though electricity worked i prefer the analogy of water going through pipes
I’d love to see a video going more in depth on the RL circuit formulas and explaining how the formulas apply intuitively when you’re looking at spintronics.
Great work Steve! Keep it up!
i´ve never seen a water-model in my head before. Thanks for showing this, its amazing how easy it is.
As an electronic engineer who spend several years learning how to model any physical system as an electric circuit, seen the oposite approach has been really enjoyable
I've been into analog electronics & mechanics my whole life, so this is like an amazing combination of the two worlds, I'm genuinely blown away, mostly because it's so simple, yet not something most of us think of creating, though that's probably because it's use is educational + entertaintement and only some of us think about often.
It is however much more interesting than I thought at first glance, it's got every component needed to explain any basic (and not so basic!) circuit to someone. Now they should make a Vacuum Tube / FET, so working based on (negative) voltage.
I've been imagining something like this for over a decade and always wondered if I could make money by inventing it. Someone beat me to the punch but regardless, this is so sick I couldn't stop smiling throughout the entire video. It's like a dream. Pure glee!
The genius is not always in the idea, sometimes the genius is in how to turn the idea into a viable product
Another cool analogy is: You can take everything that was done here and replace the chains with oil lines, and have all the same logic applied hydraulically, or even pneumatically with pressure instead of voltage. The interesting dynamic of how it applies force to a motor for example: electrically you can spin a motor magnetically, where as hydraulic/ pneumatical systems can spin a motor kinetically. Electricity has volts/ current/ resistance, where as fluids have pressure/ flow/ volume, volume has length/ width/ height, a Kinetic system has mass/ velocity/ inertia, a magnetic systems has attraction/ repel/ conduction, a thermal system has temperature/ pressure/ conduction, a mechanical system has torque/ velocity/ friction, friction has pressure/ temperature/ velocity, states of matter have solid/ liquid/ gas, time has past/ present/ future, space has length/ width/ height, velocity has distance/ time/ vector (direction)... on and on; It's easy to see how many of these qualities overlap and how many systems shake hands with each other-- and that's without even stepping into chemical and nuclear interactions. The shear complexity of what is possible within the laws of physics with only a finite amount of elements, is literally brain melting when you try to think about it deeply.''
@@caiocc12 Also talent is not something innate. It's hard work and determination to keep doing and perfecting and adapting and perseverance until reaching the goal.
That's what genius and talent is to me.
It's determination and perseverance and hard work.
I see determination, perseverance and hard work in these spintronic. That's why i'd say product is genius and people who made it were talented.
Very same applies to this YT channel!
This is amazing, whoever designed this deserves an award
Steve, thank you. I love you for taking a massive break in the middle of an engaging video to clarify accuracies and inaccuracies of things even marginally related, it’s what makes this such a great channel and why I sometimes use your videos to explain concepts to my curious and eager 8 year old.
Feed and foster that curiosity! Curiosity is future. Cheers
Congrats for feeding his/her mind. You may also want to look into "Jacque Frescos Future by Design" :)
Honestly, as an electronic engineer, this spintronic seems more complicated than the real thing, but still I can't express how much I love this idea.
There is so much care and thought in every single component it's unreal. Not only the wonderfully clever mechanics for every different component, but even the design is beautiful. It gives that old school Cyberpunk look. In a Cyberpunk world where steam power is everything and electricity is not used, I bet every circuit would work and look exactly like these spintronics.
I suppose once you intuitively understand something, an analogy is just adding extra steps
Steve, I'm a teacher that teaches electricity in tech school. I'm definitely ordering this set asap! Thanks!
This is what I imagine Gnomes came up with for computing in my D&D campaign and I love these. I didn't know you could buy kits I just knew of old mechanical computers from way back when.
That mehdi cameo was unexpected lol. I always love these little surprises you put in your videos!
I felt like I was taking crazy pills that no one else was commenting on it, until I saw your post!
My 7 and 9 year old now know more than most adults about electricity thanks to their spintronics sets. We’ve had a blast building the circuits and solving the puzzles.
I'm an electrical engineer and it's always been fun to try to make 'electronics' out of mechanical components. One time I made a mechanical version of Nine Men's Morris, got boring eventually but a very fun project.
Electrical engineer or electronics engineer? Electrical deals with a completely different aspect of electricity.. and they dont intertwine like an electrical engineer more than likely could not do the electronic engineers job but the electronic engineer would have a better understanding of an electrical engineers job...
@@Z-Ack Electronics, Mechatronics, and Systems integration
That's nothing... i built a chess board once.
@@Z-Ack At my school there is only "electrical" engineering, however if you actually look at the courses its a mix of electronics as well electrical. Final year is all electives so you get to specialize further during that year
I´m not an english native speaker, but I got every word what you said.
Wonderful explanation and beautiful video.
God bless.
Whoa, ever since Veritasium came out with his Snatoms which are a much better analogy for molecules than the old ball and stick models I've wondered if there could be something along those lines to better model electrical circuits. This is super impressive
Another cool analogy is: You can take everything that was done here and replace the chains with oil lines, and have all the same logic applied hydraulically, or even pneumatically with pressure instead of voltage. The interesting dynamic of how it applies force to a motor for example: electrically you can spin a motor magnetically, where as hydraulic/ pneumatical systems can spin a motor kinetically. Electricity has volts/ current/ resistance, where as fluids have pressure/ flow/ volume, volume has length/ width/ height, a Kinetic system has mass/ velocity/ inertia, a magnetic systems has attraction/ repel/ conduction, a thermal system has temperature/ pressure/ conduction, a mechanical system has torque/ velocity/ friction, friction has pressure/ temperature/ velocity, states of matter have solid/ liquid/ gas, time has past/ present/ future, space has length/ width/ height, velocity has distance/ time/ vector (direction)... on and on; It's easy to see how many of these qualities overlap and how many systems shake hands with each other-- and that's without even stepping into chemical and nuclear interactions. The shear complexity of what is possible within the laws of physics with only a finite amount of elements, is literally brain melting when you try to think about it deeply. . ...
Apart from anything else, these kits are just so elegant to look at. The old-timey clock appearance of those dials leans so hard into the cyberpunk aesthetic, absolutely the right design choice.
you mean steampunk?
@@xxoan.1613 Oops, yes that's exactly what I mean!
I once designed and started building a switching supply based on fluid circuits. Dodes are check valves, Capacitors are tanks with a baffle, a inductor is a coil of pipe, A transformer is two spools of inductors on a rotating shaft. A fet is a pressure controlled switch. Transistors would be tricky though.
Could you do it with spintronics ?
@@paulmartin42 An isolated transformer would be hard to imagine as more than just a shaft.
This is a great demonstration just like the hose he also states, but being an electrician that has been told by a farmer to wait for the electricity to stop flowing after killing a disconnect... Electricity dissipates far faster than water out of a hose, or even this mechanical demonstration.
But sometimes there are capacitors storing energy for a few more seconds
Great video! i love the callback to electroboom with the unibrow when you mentioned to full bridge rectifier
Steve, out of all of your epic vids, this one reigns supreme. I can't tell you how happy the 15 year old in me got. Thanks mate!❤
Loved the Mehdi costume for the full bridge rectifier!
FULL BRIDGE EYEBROW
This is a very neat science and technology toy. Good for both teaching, and experimentation.
The uni-brow at around 14:57 to coincide with the full bridge rectifier segment is Python-esque and I'm here for it.
Python2 or Python3 though?
Shoutout to all brilliant teachers. Pupils often only appreciate them decades later in life, but that doesn't diminish the appreciation. I'm grateful for the good teachers I had, and even for the not-so-good ones that nevertheless did their best.
This video was so much fun watching - even when ignoring the actual content. Just seeing someone obviously brimming with enjoyment of a new toy is uplifting. Thanks Steve.
So excited for this Kickstarter to arrive! What a great way to teach kids (and adults) the basics of electronics.
On what section is it? I cannot find it.
Fascinating. I love the steampunk aesthetic.
I was so happy when you showed an RLC circuit resonating into the steady state! We just finished working on those in my circuits and devices class.
This thing is just so unbelievably cool. I know very little of electronics but these models are just brilliant.
Thanks for your enthusiastic presentation. You've made my day!
I recently started getting into circuits, and I was really confused how a resistor can work on a diode even if it's placed AFTER the diode. But this mechanical toy makes it much more obvious, there is still resistance on the overall circuit even if it's after the diode... thank you Steve Mould (and the creators of this toy)!
Go now its very useful ua-cam.com/channels/mljORsMX4UrpMbqBfmsKsA.html
4:56 I love those units being a hint as to how all the different components work. A farad is 100 m/N, where N/m would be the units of a spring constant, so spin capacitance is like the inverse of spring strength. N * m, or force times distance, is just energy or work, so spin Watts are J/s or just regular Watts, which is very cool.
Most interesting of all, spin Henris are 0.01 N * s² / m. Note that because m/s² is acceleration, multiplying by s² / m is like diving by acceleration. So this can also be expressed as N/a: force divided by acceleration. Newton's famous equation says F = ma, so we see that N/a is just kg; 1 spin Henri is actually 0.01 kg or 10 grams. I think this result is fascinating!
That is fantastic. My mental capacity keeps me from fully grasping the concept of electrical circuitry and its components. Water running through pipes doesnt cut it. Close, but still leaves confusion.
I gotta check out more on spintronics and see if I can expand that capacitance. Thanx.👍
I love the "Full Bridge" visual gag. Well done.
So nice that Mehdi was willing to appear in your video!
for those that missed it, it's at 14:57 or here ua-cam.com/video/QrkiJZKJfpY/v-deo.html
I was searching for this comment
the univrow was great but he should have shouted FFOOOOOOOLLL BRIDGE RECTIFIIIERRRR!!!!
@@goldfishdoc1999 would have been too obvious. Loved the subtly of how he did it. :)
Hey Steve, Derek’s partly right but not totally. In DC signals it really is the current in the wire that carries the energy, so the water analogy holds here. But the field carries the energy in AC signals. So if you know anything about Fourier transforms, when you switch the light on there is a transient current which is represented by an infinite number of sinusoidal AC components. The components at highest frequency travel predominately through the field in the dielectric. Those of medium frequency through both the field in the dielectric and the current in the conductor. Those with the lowest frequency predominantly through the current in the conductor.
WOW, it always is amazing you get an eureka moment, and you finally understand intuitively something. Just happened to me with the Full Bridge Rectifier example on the spintronics.
As an EE student, this video helped me to understand more about mechanics and its applications than anything else. The spintronic inductor was eye opening, I've never tought of mechanics as I do with circuits, it was in the maths all allong but I didn't notice!
Now I have a better intuition about it and an idea on how to further develop my understanding, thanks!
Just in case you don't say it in the video:
The spintronics design is an application of "through and across variables", a generalization of many physical systems into their shared characteristics,
Which may itself be a realization of the "geometric product" as the binary operator of physical systems, where most physical phenomena can be understood as lower dimension vectors operating on one another to create higher dimension geometric shapes as "products". For example, there's a video about how Maxwell's equations can be turned into a single geometric product of two high dimension shapes. Sounds unbelievable? I suggest giving that video a watch.
8:43 that's the simplest resonating circuit! It's so cool to see it visualized like this. A full computer is possible, and schematics already exists, we just need more pieces!
Some circuit suggestions: Any DC-DC power converter would be fun to see, Buck, Boost, or Buck-Boost. Maybe an inverter to convert your DC to AC for other circuits. If you can get enough inductors and capacitors you can model a transmission line and see the propagation of the signal, similar to what the Veritasium video talked about. A differential Amplifier which is the basis of an op amp or a simple voltage regulator might be interesting to see as well.
Incredible kit with a fantastic demonstration, I've seen this advertised on social media but was sceptical of the accuracy, seeing the demonstration and description you provided dissolves that scepticism, thank you. Also, thank you for the mono-brow, haven't laughed that hard in quite some time.
This is a great idea. I always found thinking of circuits in this way was the easiest for me to understand, but I've never seen someone actually make a mechanical system to show it. It translates really well to mechanics.