Saturday, January 21, 2012

Artificial Plants II

Some time ago, I wrote about the idea of using artificial plants, machines that would strip the carbon from carbon dioxide in closd areas. What if I took this idea one step further, and have complete photosynthesis? The artificial plant would use energy to use carbon dioxide and water into glucose and oxygen. It would then dispense the glucose into a small container for later collection. The energy would not need to be solar, as is for natural plants. Being a machine and not an organism, it would not suffer disease, die when the water supply runs out, or rot. It would just be, sustaining animal life whenever it could. This and a large amount of energy could sustain civilizations to flourish in places where it is currently impossible, like the depths of the ocean, underground, or in space. However, it would also need to add nitrogen from the air to the glucose to make basic proteins, because animals can't live on sugar alone.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Part Names

While shopping a week ago, I finally learned the names of the parts that I use on computers daily: * The screws that hold the outer case of the computer together are #6 - 32. They have a length of 5mm, and threading that rises 1mm per rotation. The outer diameter is defined as 0.1380 inches, which is a little more than 3.5 mm. * The screws that hold the internal components, such as attaching the hard drives to the frame, are M3. They have a length of 5mm, and threading that rises 1/2mm per rotation. * The screws that attach the motherboard to the outer case are, surprisingly, also #6-32, but with an extended head that has an M3 drilled into them. This allows an attaching layer to be attached to the case, then the motherboard to be attached to that layer, so the motherboard can later be removed for replacement. This is also necessary because there are conductive pins on the bottom of the motherboard, and if the motherboard were to physically touch the case, a short circuit may occur. This standardization helps to keep the price of computers down.
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