Launch a Rocket, Cash a Check, and Visit Another City. Thanks, Air!
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August-September 2017 • Volume 6, No. 1 SY ALERT STEMTomorrow is almost here. ! Launch a rocket, cash a check, and visit another city. Thanks, air! A common example of pneumatic power can be found at your neighborhood bank. The tubes used to transport canisters Such from the drive-through station to pneumatic tube Pitsco’s Straw the office inside use pneumatic transportation systems are relatively Rocket Launcher force. The canister fits snugly in the rare today. But in the 1800s they uses pneumatic force – the tube, dividing the tube into the area were more common and used in power of compressed air – to in front of the canister and the area big cities such as London and New launch a small rocket. A weighted behind it. York to transport mail and other rod is dropped into a chamber When the air in the tube in front items from one office to another connected to the rocket. The rod of the canister is sucked out by a and even between buildings. compresses the air inside the motorized fan, a difference in air London had more than 30 miles of chamber. The rapidly pressurized pressure is created between the front pneumatic tubes beneath the city air pushes against the rocket with and back ends of the canister. The streets. You might even say that air such force that it sends it flying. air behind the canister automatically power was the first Internet. pushes the canister into the lower- (continued on page 3) pressure area in front of it until the canister arrives at its destination. Online Visit and www.pitsco.com/SySTEMalert. quiz electronic available. now version In the near future, these gates will be built so small that the short distances will no longer prevent electrons from Computing at spontaneously leaping from one side to the next. Sometimes we want them to cross the barrier, but at other times we don’t. the edge of Even a physical barrier between the two sides might not prevent unwanted crossing. At scales smaller than atoms, objects behave differently than we are used to. One weird effect called possibility quantum tunneling allows electrons to pass through barriers. So, we are now reaching a physical limit. Engineers are A computer’s ability to think depends on its ability to struggling to find a way around this problem. control the flow of electrons. WHAT COMES NEXT? Transistors are structures on microchips. They act like gates Why is it a problem if Moore’s law no longer holds? Consider this. that open and close, either halting the flow of electrons or The development of new computing technology is crucial to our letting them continue on their way. economy. Without the production of faster, better machines, some The more transistors that can fit on a microchip, the more are afraid that the world’s economic engine could slow down. computations the computer can do. Computer manufacturers Some seek new ways to design conventional transistors to work hard to find ways to fit more and more transistors on a avoid the problem at small scales. Others are trying to develop computer chip. fundamentally different technologies – types that don’t have For the past 52 years, a general trend called Moore’s law has this innate problem. held true. Moore’s law predicts that every 18 months the number • One such technology is neuromorphic architecture, of transistors we will be able to fit on a computer chip will double. which takes the structure of the human brain as Today, the computers we carry around in our pockets can fit literally inspiration for a new type of computer chip. billions of transistors on a single chip. This is why computers are so • Another idea is called quantum computing. Rather than much more capable today than they were five or 10 years ago. suffering from the effects that happen at very small Moore’s law has held true so far. That doesn’t mean it will scales, quantum computers make use of these effects. always hold true in the future. We might be nearing the end of In quantum computing, a single particle can be in two the era in which we are able to fit more and more transistors on different states at the same time. For example, a particle a chip. How will this affect computers of the future? could be in two different locations at the same time. Scientists still don’t understand how this can be true, but MISBEHAVING ELECTRONS experiments show that it does happen. Transistors work by controlling the charge at the gate. A Neuromorphic and quantum computers could be vastly positive charge attracts electrons, allowing them to pass from more powerful than classical computers in many ways, but there one side of the gate to the next. At present, these gates are so are also ways in which classical computers have advantages. small that they are only a few atoms across. That means there is still plenty of need for computer Can you already glimpse the conundrum for engineers? engineers to find ingenious ways to improve the transistor. ! Learn about the behavior of electricity with Pitsco’s Simple Circuits Board. Comes with a double-pole, double-throw switch; DC motor; two lights; and a DC power supply. 2 | SySTEM Alert! Why water? Water is an essential ingredient in photosynthesis, the process by which a Suck it up plant makes food for itself. Not only that, Paper towels absorb water. Their secret weapon is that they are water pulled from the soil carries with it made of cellulose, the same material water is attracted to in the nutrients that help make the tree grow. ! tubes in trees. Underlying this attraction is the fact that water molecules have an imbalanced charge. One side of the molecule is negatively charged and the other side is positively charged. This is also why water molecules cohere – the negative end of one molecule is attracted to the positive end of another. ! How water gets to the tops of trees Put your hand on your chest and water beads up and holds together. So as one water feel your heart beating. It drives molecule is drawn into a tube, it pulls another in the flow of blood through your CAREER FIELDS behind it, and that one pulls another. • Arborist body. Trees transport water up The tubes fill with water. Way up in the treetops, • Botanist through their trunks, yet they do holes in leaves called stomata expose the water this without an organ like a heart. to air and sun. Molecule by molecule, the water Trees have mastered a way of making evaporates. This is called transpiration. Because of water move while they stand perfectly still. cohesion, more water is pulled up from behind. The Trees contain networks of cells that form very long, chain reaction of this very thin tubes like bundled straws. These reach from pulling effect reaches all the roots to the leaves. Water is attracted to the material the way back down the in the tubes and is drawn up from the ground. trunk into the roots and Water molecules are attracted to other water pulls more water from molecules. This is called cohesion, and it is why the ground. ! (continued from page 1) The efficiency with which air power is used to zip objects around has inspired dreams of transporting But the Hyperloop is not the first pneumatic people the same way. Maybe you’ve heard of the transportation concept. In fact, some have even Hyperloop, a planned transportation system that been built! The Crystal Palace pneumatic railway might someday allow ultrafast travel between cities. in London was built in 1864 and operated for two The Hyperloop works a little differently than the months. A huge fan was used to create a low- tubes at the bank, but it does rely on an enclosed pressure area in a 600-meter tunnel. A train car environment with low air pressure. And it is propelled carrying passengers crossed the distance. There by a cushion of air. are also accounts of thrill seekers riding in large pneumatic tubes meant to carry the mail around the same time. ! SySTEM Alert! | 3 Storyline: Cody White | Artwork: Jason Pitsco Redd | ©2017 Education Learn more about the elite team of heroes in STEM Force by visiting www.pitsco.com/systemalert/stemforce. Glasses make the world Volume 6, No. 1 SY ALERT more rainbowtastic STEMTomorrow is almost here. ! The seven traditional colors of the rainbow The glasses created by Kats and Vice President, Education are just the beginning. There are many subtle Gundlach use a clever trick that causes & Executive Editor: Matt Frankenbery, shades in between, and most humans can the brain to simulate tetrachromacy. The [email protected] distinguish about a million colors. glasses don’t actually add a fourth cone. But some people still aren’t satisfied. Instead, they make one type of cone act Communications Manager & Editor: What if there were a pair of glasses that like two types of cones. Tom Farmer, [email protected] could let you see millions of additional The cone that, roughly speaking, is Writer & Assistant Editor: colors? Now such glasses exist. They have responsible for seeing blues is sensitive to Cody White, [email protected] been developed by professor Mikhail a particular spectrum of light. The lenses in Lead Graphic Artist & Layout: Kats and student Brad Gundlach at the the glasses filter this part of the spectrum Melissa Karsten, [email protected] University of Wisconsin-Madison. differently for each eye. The left eye gets Human eyes use color-sensitive cells one half of the blue spectrum and the SySTEM Alert! is published by Pitsco, Inc.