Inductor Basics In a circuit diagram, an inductor is shown like this: To understand how an inductor can work in a circuit, this figure is helpful: What you see here is a battery, a light bulb, a coil of wire around a piece of iron (yellow) and a switch. The coil of wire is an […]
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Pendulum Parts Pendulum clocks have been used to keep time since 1656, and they have not changed dramatically since then. Pendulum clocks were the first clocks made to have any sort of accuracy. When you look at a pendulum clock from the outside, you notice several different parts that are important to the mechanism of
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From How CDs Work, you learn that a normal CD uses microscopic bumps to store data. The surface of the CD is a mirror, and the bumps disrupt the mirror’s perfect surface. The laser that reads the CD can detect the difference between a perfect mirror and an imperfection caused by a bump because of
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Focusing on the Problem At the most basic level, a camera makes a record of light. When you photograph a scene, light reflected by the scene hits your camera’s lens. The lens bends the light and redirects it to the recording medium. In a film camera, that medium is a strip of chemically treated plastic.
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In the Beginning: Etching Tin Thomas Edison is credited with creating the first device for recording and playing back sounds in 1877. His approach used a very simple mechanism to store an analog wave mechanically. In Edison’s original phonograph, a diaphragm directly controlled a needle, and the needle scratched an analog signal onto a tinfoil
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Virtual Reality Immersion In a virtual reality environment, a user experiences immersion, or the feeling of being inside and a part of that world. He is also able to interact with his environment in meaningful ways. The combination of a sense of immersion and interactivity is called telepresence. Computer scientist Jonathan Steuer defined it as
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What is Autofocus? Autofocus (AF) really could be called power-focus, as it often uses a computer to run a miniature motor that focuses the lens for you. Focusing is the moving of the lens in and out until the sharpest possible image of the subject is projected onto the film. Depending on the distance of
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Facial Recognition Technology Identix®, a company based in Minnesota, is one of many developers of facial recognition technology. Its software, FaceIt®, can pick someone’s face out of a crowd, extract the face from the rest of the scene and compare it to a database of stored images. In order for this software to work, it
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Edison’s Discovery In 1877, Thomas Edison and his assistants attached a needle to the diaphragm of a telephone receiver with the idea that the needle could be used to etch an impression of sound onto quickly moving paper, thus creating a recording or sound writing. Edison understood that sound is the vibration of particles across
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Wireless’ Unending Evolution Wireless networks are hodgepodge of various and overlapping technologies. No matter how convoluted the acronyms, what it always boils down to is this — wireless networks are radio systems. You can read about the basics of cell phone technology in How Cell Phones Work and How Smartphones Work. No matter which wireless
